Way of Life
by SDoradus
Summary: Arc 7 of 8: New ships into dark space. An ME Fic written a year before the "Mass Effect: Andromeda" trailer, the last arc of "Gone with the Sun" has survivors heading for Andromeda.
1. The shorn lamb

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 84 **The shorn lamb**

* * *

 _Go down to the sea again_

Familiar shape, different dress. As an Alliance frigate _North Cape_ was in currently standard black, blue, and silver livery with the SR2 function designator in orange.

Shepard's new dress uniform crinkled as he walked to the airlock and was piped through with Eva, wearing plain Alliance battledress – but he'd watched her pack fatigues, silks, a little M-11 in a sling, and her skinsuit, in her duffel. Also, oddly, a little paper bible, of all things, in glagolitic script no less. Eva was clearly serious about blending with her crew. But where had she got such a thing?

No toothbrush. Shepard would get her some… organic things, for the look of it.

They met a pair of officers saluting at the cockpit entrance: a lieutenant and a commander, who would be his XO, Alexander Olegovich Chernykh. If all went well, Chernykh would be elevated to 'captain' on his departure.

Shepard greeted them with a salute, and introduced himself before the autotranslators kicked in:

"Captain John Shepard, reporting for duty. Permission to come aboard?"

"Капитан, кто это? Ста́рший ми́чман."

"Oh, I'm sorry. May I present to you your new AI tech, Dr Eva Coré?"

It had been decided that Eva would continue her specialist Mars Archives ID as a technical specialist, but with pilot training – rather like the historical Buzz Aldrin, "Doctor Orbit."

Specifically, this frigate's new AI would have a PhD, granted _dans un temps record_ from the still-running Sorbonne – though from L'Institut d'astrophysique de Paris, part of College no. 6 (Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie), whose records weren't extant. This meant the diploma was uncheckable. But while the Jussieu campus was now a somewhat radioactive rubble pile, Eva's was indeed a genuine Sorbonne degree, or at least genuinely paid for by Cerberus, and she had in fact passed the viva and written exams for it, taking care to make the occasional excusable error.

"Добро пожаловать на борт, Капитан."

"Спасибо, Старший лейтенант; Кавторанг," (Shepard used the informal Russian abbreviation for _Капитан второго ранга_ , corresponding to 'commander'.)

They shook hands and passed through to the CIC where Shepard's and Eva's orders were validated by a young signals chief at the comm board, in English thank god – Shepard was more comfortable with that (damn Russian reflexive verbs).

They then returned to the cockpit where Eva was shown her battle station – the co-pilots seat.

By this time the slow turian-built VI running _North Cape's_ automated systems had twigged to the fact that a non-Russian language was being spoken and engaged the autotranslator net.

"Eva, you did satisfy EDI on _Normandy-_ class flight parameters, right?"

"Yes, Captain. I have the refined _Normandy_ protocols. We conducted a full-scale interior test suite" – meaning that the mobiles had sat and looked blank for twenty minutes, linked with a cable, running a Normandy cockpit digital tutorial sim.

At this point they were rejoined by the middle-aged Russian, line Commander Chernykh, who stood next to the Lieutenant.

"Good. The instant we clear Citadel control, I want you at the controls for the trip to lunar orbit, S-1, and on to Jump Zero." This was Shepard's very first operational order. The niceties, however, were apparently lost on the _North Cape's_ pilot:

"I'm sorry, Captain, but I can't allow that."

 _Spare the lamb from the freezing breeze_

Chernykh winced. Shepard had been expecting something like this, though not so soon. He and Eva turned and stared at the interloper.

"And who are you, exactly?"

"Lieutenant Bogdan Pavlovich Nicolaev, sir. _Flight_ lieutenant, and _North Cape's_ pilot, Captain" - exclaimed the young man, snapping to attention, using old and not really correct but widely-used rank descriptors (Лейтенант авиации, Flight Lieutenant, meaning commander of a 'flight' or fighter squadron section).

"Pilot, right…"

Nicolaev had presented as very enthusiastic, especially when shaking the hand of the new ' _AI specialist_ ,' a carefully ambiguous phrase meaning "specialist who is an AI", not simply "specialist in AI technology". Yet despite the Russian military tradition of assigning combat roles to women, he seemed unable to credit Eva's competence.

Shepard scarcely blamed him. His own jaw had dropped with all the others after the little dress-up exercise by Liara and Oriana. Still, Nicolaev was _way_ out of line here.

"…I am sorry you feel that way, Lieutenant. Follow my orders."

Eva was comfortable with not being introduced as an AI, and for infiltration purposes it suited Hackett just fine. Sooner or later her synthetic nature would be apparent, of course, but there were policy questions here: would AIs suffer discrimination? Might they hold rank? Must they declare themselves?

"But sir! She is quite unqualified to fly my ship!" The pilot thus yielded a data-point, as well as the first confirmation that not disclosing Eva's nature on _North Cape_ could be 'diverting', as Hannah put it. Among the Russians, only the flag officer, Admiral Pyotr Mikhailovich, would be in on the joke, at least to begin with.

"Really? I'll bet she could beat your time to the Gagarin rebuild, Lieutenant. How many times have you made that run?"

"Five, so far, sir, just freight hops through the local conduit relays with the dock engineer. But sir, you must be joking. She's only an ensign and not flight-trained."

And in fact, that did not appear on Eva's military record. Yet.

"She _is_ flight-trained, Lieutenant. Her check flight was an hour ago. I might add that her record has yet to be updated…"

The pilot opened his mouth to speak again, but subsided when his XO raised a finger. Shepard continued: "… Nonetheless, Lieutenant, that is not sufficient justification for telling your commanding officer that _you cannot allow_ a course of action specified in a direct order."

Both the Navigator and the XO went white. Russian-crewed Alliance ships were particularly severe on internal discipline. Chernykh stood to attention:

"Captain, I do not wish to offer excuses for my comrade here, but is the Captain aware of the formal penalty for a delict of that nature?"

"As I recall, commander, the Alliance Code of Military Justice envisages a general discharge from Alliance service." Shepard was inclined to invoke the Code, sending this kid before Mikhailovich, to avoid being second-guessed in a crisis by an unknown.

"Yes, Captain Shepard – at which point our feckless pilot would revert to Russian military service." At this point, Eva – astonishingly – spoke up in the pilot's defence:

"On the other hand, Shepard, the mere fact of being seconded to the Alliance…"  
– she trailed off as Shepard glared at her. But it was true, Alliance secondment implied this particular silly Russian boy must be highly thought of by his peers.

"Hm. Pilots of advanced skill are not easily replaced."

"That is _not_ my point, Captain," insisted Chernykh. "If the conditions of his Alliance discharge are less than honorable, he will be assigned to a _penal_ corps."

Clearly he was missing something. "Penal corps? Is this something to do with SPD codes?"

But even as he spoke, Shepard became aware there was more to this than a note on the discharge certificate. He had practised people-watching with Samara and Kelly for some time. Out of the corner of his eye, he perceived that _now_ young Bogdan seemed frozen. He allowed the silence to draw out a few seconds, then turned to the pilot.

"Lieutenant, would you prefer a formal hearing before the flag, or Captain's mast?" A formal hearing by Mikhailovich was one step down from a Court Martial.

"Captain's mast, if you please, sir." This, by contrast, was a purely administrative measure. Shepard nodded assent. There was perceptible relaxation among crew studiously examining their consoles.

"We will make your reparation an educational exercise, I think, Lieutenant. We will see if you can prevent Ensign Dr. Coré from buckling into the co-pilot's seat. Go!"

 _Hajimae_

Eva, not slow on the uptake, instantly sprinted for the cockpit and leaped into her seat. Shepard, chasing her mobile on Mars, had barely been able to keep up despite peak condition. By the time she'd buckled in, poor Bogdan Pavlovich was barely at the end of the CIC, which seemed to occasion no end of amusement among his crewmates.

Bogdan stopped, turned, and in an outraged gesture, arms wide, protested that such a race on zero warning was unfair. His commander, Chernykh, groaned and closed his eyes. Shepard, though, placidly conceded the point and added:

"Very well, Lieutenant. Although I note that the Ensign is not complaining. You will bar her from repeating the performance. Eva, return to the CIC."

As Eva unbuckled and walked straight past Nicolaev, nose in air, all present noted that she was eight centimeters smaller in height than the pilot – and that she was beyond doubt a slightly built female. Any contest should be hopelessly one-sided.

Shepard himself noted something else: that she seemed to have been taking lessons from either Oriana or Kelly. Chernykh looked a little perturbed:

"Captain, are you sure about this?"

"Commander, I have _personally_ seen Eva, in an earlier incarnation, give a strong well-built and armored infantry officer a severe concussion."

This outrageous tale met with general disbelief. Eva, returning to the CIC, asked:

"Orders?"

"Finish the impasse, not him."

"Is there any point in hurrying, Shepard?"

"No, Eva. In fact, please be gentle with him. In your own time, Ensign."

Eva walked casually, again with that gentle sway, straight towards the pilot attempting to bar her passage. On arrival, Bogdan extended his left arm to push her chest. She began to push it aside, and he attempted to grab her tunic.

Eva took his extended fist in both her hands and flexed it back in an adductive wristlock – an aikido _nikyō_ technique which obliged the pilot to drop to his knees, howling. She converted that to a supinating wristlock; Nicolaev shrieked and dove to his left, rolling to one side. Eva continued down the access-way toward the cockpit.

Still groaning, Bogdan, half-mad with the adrenaline rush, up and stormed toward her back, even as Commander Chernykh shouted, "Stop!"

Eva turned in the last half-second and took the onrushing pilot in _morote seoi nage_. His back hit the ground with a resounding _thump_ , and no breakfall. Shepard winced, and cried "Ip- _pon_!"

Eva turned, nodded, and stepped over Bogdan's supine form.

Chernykh rushed down towards his gurgling, winded, and stunned pilot.

Shepard by contrast shook his head in resignation and proceeded toward the cockpit, reaching the two officers as the pilot staggered to his feet, assisted by his commander.

On arrival Shepard assumed parade rest and waited, giving the pilot a fixed stare. A few seconds later, supported by Chernykh, Nicolaev twigged that he was expected to say something:

"Er… I yield?"

"Well done, Lieutenant. Your education is complete. I see no need for penalty. Resume your action station. Eva, take us first to lunar parking orbit at discretion. And ensign, why that throw in particular? The high dump thoroughly winded him."

"There wasn't sufficient room either side for _tai otoshi_ or a leg sweep, sir. Rather too much _uke_ momentum for a hip throw, and _tomoenage_ …"

"… would have projected him into the cockpit. Yes, I worked that out. Thank you, ensign, for doing it the gentle way."

A greatly subdued crew spent the next twenty minutes in the routine transit. Shepard spent the time in the loft, now – briefly – his to use, and caught up on administrivia at the private terminal, until his terminal _bonged_ and Eva asked:

"Sir, when should we power up the AI core?"

"Admiral Mikhailovich wishes to see that in progress, Eva. We await his arrival."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #85, "Crew and Cargo"_

* * *

Friday, August 14, 2015


	2. Crew and Cargo

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 85 **Crew and cargo**

* * *

 _Gentlewomen of the Fourth Estate_

In the cargo bay two hours later, _North Cape_ picked up the shuttle with Admiral Pyotr Mikhailovich's party, including:

– Oriana Lawson (with camera), and  
– Kahlee Sanders, together with Shepard's little nuclear family:  
– Kelly, i.e. Ensign Felicia Hannigan RN, in blue Alliance nurse's uniform, and:  
– _little_ Felicia (not in uniform at all).

This put Shepard somewhat at a loss as to meet-and-greet priorities. Meanwhile, Sanders embraced Eva. Shepard settled for saluting his superior, and exchanging a quick _bise_ with, er, Felicia – somewhat spoiled by the camera's assiduous attention.

The astonishment of the crew, doubled by the avuncular approval of their own Admiral, redoubled in hearts when 'nurse' passed Shepard the baby. Eva accompanied the three women, chattering like sparrows, down to the elevator. Ori's camera kept tracking Shepard (carrying baby Felicia) who trailed behind, keeping half an ear open. Mikhailovich brought up the rear with a couple of aides.

Their subject of conversation would have been most improper for broadcast, being about al-Jilani's adventures while trying to film a before-and-after doco. Specifically, Khalisah had exchanged heated words with two Jewish fundamentalists claiming the dust of Jerusalem to rebuild the third temple.

Elsewhere, several Islamic fundamentalists objected to her presence (as a woman) at certain GPS co-ordinates, and further objected to the language she used at them. More than words were exchanged. The instigators had been scraping for any remains of the vaporized Kaaba in the humongous crater that had been Mecca. And Khalisah was being photographed on the exact spot. Now, no-one there was searching for anything.

Jilani's escorts, from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan yet based out of Medina, had 'won,' sort of – for a given value of body count. And they retained command of the field of battle. Miri had quoted an old saying to Ori: _Think of it as evolution in action_.

The unspeakable camera was getting on his nerves. This had to be programmed behavior. And Oriana was doing the programming. And actually…

"Oriana! Who's in charge of the apartment!"

But all he got back was fingers being waved and a kiss blown as the elevator door closed. _Oh, bugger._

Behind him, Mikhailovich, dogging his steps to the elevator, said: "I believe some _Normandy_ crewmen were taking leave there, with one Traynor as concierge? And as they left Ms Lawson greeted Garrus Vakarian, with a troop of Turians."

"There's trouble. Watch out for man-traps on return. As for this bloody camera…" Shepard stopped by the door: "I told Oriana for posterity only, not for the news."

The Admiral had been grinning throughout, and took this opportunity to observe:  
"What were you _thinking_ , Captain? You now have permission to take your, um. Partner and child on operations? And you don't expect the world to sit up and take notice of their existence?"

"Aw, _crap_." Shepard looked down at Felicia, who – on cue – delivered a huge toothless grin.

"Language, Captain. Now, where may I see this AI in action?"

 _C_ _lick Clack C_ _luck_

On the crew deck, Shepard was abandoned while Eva and Sanders busied themselves in the AI core. Kelly/Felicia and Oriana organized accommodation in the XO's cabin, breaking baby supplies out of plastic containers.

He found himself surrounded at the commissary table by exclaiming crew he did not have the heart to discourage. Especially since little Felicia was hamming it up like a pro, waving her hands and going _goo_ at every sympathetic finger – mostly but by no means entirely female.

And all the while, Pyotr Mikhailovich was grinning like a lunatic.

"Admiral, what's so funny?"

"Let them cluck, Captain, they don't get much chance."

… and so it went. The upside was that he was relieved of changing or feeding tasks. After a few seconds a detail in Pyotr's comment impinged on his consciousness:

"You know this crew?"

"Russophone survivors – _Emden, Shenyang,_ some from _Hong Kong_. **My** people."

Kelly poked her nose out of the XO's office for a few seconds – designated and dazzled caregivers, then gave proceedings (under Shepard's nose) her blessing.

"Many of these people have had a terrible time, these last three years or so."

The nappy detail was completed in short order, courtesy three Russian middle-aged crew, one of whom was a lieutenant with a Russian infantry combat blazon on her tunic. "Your child, your stunning wife–"

"– I should be so lucky."

"However informal the arrangement, they are images of what we fought for. So when Hackett asked me if I could tolerate a commander's wife and child for a couple of weeks…"

"You accepted with alacrity. I get it."

Formula was delegated by the infantry lieutenant to the young Signals tech who had validated Shepard's post orders. She did not hesitate to tell Captain Shepard that he'd made it too hot for baby. Oriana beckoned her to the XO office for photo op. When she retreated, Pyotr could barely contain his sniggers: " **My** people. _Snurf, snurf, snurf._ "

"They could show their Captain a little more respect, dammit."

"Yes, I heard about your little run-in with Bogdan. What actually happened there?"

"Ah. Your pilot objected to my instructing his new co-pilot to take the helm as far as Gagarin – in fact declared he could not allow it. To the Captain, that is, _me_. Just after formally taking the boat in charge."

Mikhailovich's jaw went slack a moment. "I _see_. He does identify strongly… "

"Essentially he left me a choice between Captain's mast and a formal hearing. Chernykh told me something interesting, actually. Since when does a general discharge form occasion for a penal assignment in the home forces?"

Suddenly the Admiral was not smiling at all.

"Is that why you offered a Captain's mast?"

"Well, yes. There was something going on there. I'm not going to condemn anyone to a punishment whose nature is not clear. Actually, what _is_ a penal corps?"

"Would you deliver the child to your wife for a while Captain… ?" (Shepard forbore to correct Kelly's designation.) "There is something I really must show you."

 _The Blessed Ones_

As the elevators opened on to the shuttle bay, Shepard noticed the space was much more open than had been the case in _Peacemaker_ and _Overlord_ , which were test beds for experimental weapons. There were shuttles, a Hammerhead! the plans must have survived – and some freight. The shuttle was being made ready for launch. A workbench held a little Eastern Orthodox shrine, candles lit, two CPOs with heads bowed. Sixteen grey-clad men and women in uniforms badged as infantry pioneers were eating a meal at a trestle table.

"These are crew?"

"Not exactly. They have been seconded to the Alliance roster for this trip only."

"I see. Maintenance workers."

Shepard and Mikhailovich started towards the group at the table by the loading door.

"In a manner of speaking. In fact, they have been performing some fitting out under the direction of the dockmaster till now."

"Right… So, these are penal corps personnel?"

"Yes. Volunteers, but they perform the function of pioneer troops. They are criminals, or the irretrievably indoctrinated, who have received their punishment and are now productively employed in a sheltered environment suited to their capacities."

"They are damaged? Disabled in some way?"

"They have been… repaired. Preferable to disposing of them completely. Less… inefficient." This sounded ominous:

"So they're going home in the shuttle?"

"They no longer have a home on Earth. They will be spending some considerable time as maintenance workers in a mobile detention facility on the moon, once they have finished their meal. Later they will man some of our large troop carriers, overseeing substantial personnel in cold sleep."

"Prison workers. Well. How long are they incarcerated?"

"For them it is a place of service, not a place of imprisonment. We run it jointly with the turians, who lost their previous one in the recent unpleasantness."

Shepard had no particular desire to meet Baba Yaga in her cabin, absent a clear duty, and declined the opportunity to seek further details. As they approached, the Alliance NCO in charge of the group came to attention and barked,

"Officers on deck!"

The Admiral nodded. "Parade rest, Chief. Would you have them doff their caps for inspection."

The group all had shaven heads, including the women. There was a perfect circular scar around each cranium, as though the boundary of a bowl haircut.

"So… what is the nature of this 'repair?'"

"The subject's neural map is obtained by non-invasive means, which requires several minutes of stimulus and response. Besides the five or six identified Reaper indoctrination patterns there are currently twenty-three pathological syndromes which can be mapped by neuroscale hybrid PET and diagnostic nanites. Should certain of these be identified, the subject becomes a patient."

"What does that mean?"

"Prison is not for them, for it is not their fault their brains have a known structural defect. The proper solution is not punishment, but repair of the defect, in so far as that is possible. The cranium is lifted, the relevant sheaves of neurons open like flowers, and are bridged. The neural crossovers are rewritten, _pia_ and _dura mater_ repaired."

"My God…" One prisoner had drawn letters, Shepard's name, a curious rune, then _BILLY_ , in the dust on the bench.

" **He** is not directly involved. _Cerberus_ tech."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #86, "Water Spirit"_

* * *

Friday, August 14, 2015


	3. Water Spirit

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 86 **Water spirit**

* * *

 _Diagnostics_

Shepard and Mikhailovich called back announcing a slight delay getting back to the crew deck. Mikhailovich called over another CPO, and the pioneers' supervisor joined them. "Chief, where have these people been working on the _North Cape?_ "

"Engineering subwell, sir, resolution of identified hydraulic leaks, replacement of two faulty spar strain rosettes."

"Run us through that area, if you would Chief."

It only took five minutes to find the bomb, timed for fifty minutes from that point.

" _Боже мой!"_

"Admiral, please ensure K- Hannigan is kept occupied. I would prefer she not see what happens next. Get your engineers down here, too. And Ensign Eva." Who duly appeared, in skinsuit. The bomb was an amateur affair but might have done serious damage, forcing reliance on secondary hydraulic lines, and dockyard repairs. The UXB specialists drilled holes in the top and bottom of the plastic case and ran boiling hot water through it till most of the _plastique_ had been drained as slurry.

"Eva, front and center please." The PETM in the detonators was no longer such a worry, but Eva shorted the caps twice, then clipped and removed them. "Guys, make it look cosmetically OK, quickly as you can, please. "

The engineers looked quizzically at Shepard but did as asked with blue epoxy. A glowering Shepard oversaw their efforts till: "Seal it up, safe it."

The defanged device was presented to "Billy" by Eva, with a salute and a smile, just as the pioneers filed back into their shuttle."Billy" screamed and leapt at Shepard, but was caught in mid-air by Eva, and slammed against the side of the shuttle. Shepard nodded in satisfaction: "Admiral, we can revert to schedule, once the shuttle departs."

"Should we not have the engineers look for similar devices?"

"Of course, and especially on all the other last-minute dockyard repairs. But had there been anything similar, I would have expected a much calmer demeanor." Billy screamed again and scrabbled at Eva's uniform sleeve. This hypnotized the engineers, who were trying to figure out how a 174cm woman could hold a much larger prisoner off his feet against the shuttle hull. "This one stays, I think."

"How would you like me to dispose of it, Captain?" – asked Pyotr. This was echoed by Eva: "Orders?"

"Finish–"

" _Shepard!"_

 _A matter of judgment_

Hannigan, by now in her skinsuit, strode from the elevator carrying Felicia in a swaddling cloth, closely followed by the Signals chief.

"The whole atmosphere changed a while ago. People are trying to keep me from you. _What's going on?_ "

Oriana appeared too, a gaggle of protesting crewfolk in her train. Shepard groaned.

"Man to man… should we quietly dispose of it, Shepard?" – repeated the Admiral.

"No, Pyotr. Trust me, the cat's well and truly out of the bag. Just wait… Billy, whoever you are, do you have the power of speech anymore? Eva, release him."

"Billy" of course leapt straight for Shepard… who back-handed him straight out of the air and on the decking, stunned.

"Implants or not, Billy, you're not dangerous to me in a straight-up fair fight."

Getting to his feet, the pioneer trooper emitted a slurred declaration: "But _I_ don't fight fair." Whereupon Shepard delivered a snap kick between the legs:

"Neither do I – not _all_ the time," – and grinned happily. _A_ _bit of catharsis for once_.

" _Shepard! What_ are you _doing?"_ Oops.

"Hannigan, meet someone called Billy. Who seems to have insinuated himself into a dockyard repair program expressly for the purpose of killing _me_." Hannigan registered the admiral's raised eyebrows; _This was news to him_. Meanwhile, the grubby, nose-bloody object of Shepard's wrath slowly got to his feet, taking small screeching breaths, still crouching to shield his abused gonads. Still in that painfully slurred manner, he declared:

"Lordy, it's the sweet thing. Didn't know you had a wife and kid, let alone here, Shepard. Only had the public assignment of duty. Three for the price of one, hey?"

Shepard went white. The Russian Admiral carefully, deliberately, produced his personal Colt-Nagant limited-issue general officer's side-arm, and as quietly as he could cocked the action. There was still an audible click. He took careful aim.

" _Admiral. Wait."_ Hannigan turned and gave baby Felicia to the infantry lieutenant, then began a slow circle of 'Billy', who began looking a little alarmed. "Last time I saw you, you had more hair." (Mikhailovich began to warn her, but Shepard waved him to silence.) "So, you recognize me, Billy?"

"Yeah. The chick with Jack." His neck swiveled, trying to track the circling girl.

Hannigan nodded absently, adding another web to the obvious motivations. _But there_ _are_ _holes here_.  
"Admiral, I fear your PET scanners leave much to be desired in regard to the seat of personality," – she began in an oddly distant and detached voice.

Shepard stared. "You knew about these treatments, Hannigan?"

"They're not classified, Shepard, just very technical."

Mikhailovich nodded. "We have been quite open about the technique."

"I've read reports in the med school texts. I must say, Admiral, I felt them to be… "

"Barbaric?" She noticed the Admiral's aim wavered not a hair's width while he spoke. Good: this would do.

"I would say… _sinful_ … except that I suspect whatever the nature of the God of that little shrine might be… sin to him is not quite as _we_ would imagine it."

 _Bitch is s_ _till circling._ Billy addressed her again, to shake her composure:

"You know, I could kill you while you walk. Just get between that gun and me again."

"Mm… No. You couldn't, but…" the swayte thang kept circling, absorbing, speaking in that strangely distant, husky voice; "… do try it, why don't you?"

Billy's sense of unease and frustration grew to a crescendo. The whole point of conversation was to make the victim upset and afraid. No fear, no ecstasy. And this woman was not following the script.

"Admiral… tell your therapists… they missed something. Broca's area…"

"Nurse Hannigan? What exactly?"

"Brodman area 45, afferent fibres from the prefrontal cortex… they got the wrong ones… this person's speech centers are mostly on the _other_ side of the brain… and they missed autonoetic disconnection… pathology in the uncinate fasciculus…"

At this point Hannigan walked between the Admiral's gun and Billy who, without understanding her words, realized they amounted to another cranial exposure, so had at her again, trying to use her as shield – or at least take another before he went.

She read the muscular intent, and ducked. In the silence after the Admiral's gun cracked, the _North Cape's_ PA system crackled to life:

" _Shepard. Kahlee here. We're ready for you and Pyotr,_ _but I don't see Eva_ _."_

* * *

 _Aide de camp_

Brooks was looking around, admiring the well-appointed loft cabin, as he entered.

"Have to tell you, Admiral, I never thought I'd descend so low as to be someone's batman."

The admiral's real batman, who was also the ship's medical corpsman, grinned and finished laying out a syringe and nanite hair treatment. "What are people going to think when I turn up in crew quarters?"

Mikhailovich grunted. Matters here appeared well in hand, but:

"Just stay out of sight here for an hour or so, till you are summoned to the conference room. Pavel here tells me reversing your skin and hair disguise will take that long. Please avoid distressing him. I have to brief Chambers and Shepard."

"Stay out of sight. I can do that. The rest, no guarantees."

 _Decoy_

A greatly subdued, but strangely satisfied, crew went about their business, albeit whispering and gossiping.

Eva now sat on the AI core bench with a thumb-thick superconducting nanofilament cable connected to the blank, but now powered-up, AI core.

The usual suspects, plus Mikhailovich, assembled in the Med Bay – minus Kelly and Oriana, retreating to the XO accommodation with the tech carrying Felicia (who had cried at the bark of the Admiral's pistol). And of course Jana, in the AI core, to supervise the VI to AI transition. Shepard too was _not_ present, being in the cockpit:

"So, pilot lieutenant, are you ready to follow instructions at this time?"

"Yes, sir. It won't happen again sir."

"Very well. First item of business; how confident are you in your ability to conduct an approach to the L-1-relay over Luna City, low-risk but using three-quarters thruster power?"

"Sir, in the time from parking hold to L-1 _North Cape_ would accumulate a proper speed of well over five thousand kilometres per hour! And L-1 is only two hundred metres above the mean selenoid!"

"I am aware of that, Lieutenant. _Could you do it_ _safely_ _?"_

"…Yes, sir. There has been code posted for instructing a VI to run the approach at high speed."

"And suppose the VI were turned off? Could you do _that_?"

The pilot licked his lips. It was possible, especially since he had studied the code posted by _Overlord's_ pilot.

"It's do-able, sir, but I'd get better with practice."

"Then let us evaluate your skills, Lieutenant. This first time, you are instructed NOT to transit the relay. That will mean a slight deviation from the posted track. Can you do _that?_ "

"Yes, sir. Don't expect super speed on the first run."

Shepard opened a link to the AI core.

"Very well. Low risk dummy transit exercise. Securing the VI. In your own time, Mr Nicolaev."

* * *

 _Rusalka_

In the AI core, an orange tell-tale lit to announce the securing of the VI.

"Good, Shepard has everyone distracted. Bring up the AI, Jana."

"Big Green button time. Here we go."

The AI core's power supply sprang to life and all the status lamps lit, red at first, then orange, then white.

"Eva?"

"Under control, Admiral. This core has never been initialized. It will take a minute or two."

The status lamps went green.

"Ah. Good physical diagnostics complete. Uploading. Five minutes to go."

…

Quarter of an hour later, the Admiral re-appeared on the CIC deck, with Eva, made his way to the cockpit, and addressed Shepard, standing behind Nicolaev:

"How did it go, Captain?"

"Ninety seconds from go to L-1, Admiral. Only twenty-five seconds greater than a VI-assisted approach. We'll be back in parking orbit forthwith."

Despite himself, Mikhailovich was impressed.

"That was very well done, pilot."

"Thank you sir. Although I expect that with practice, I could get within a second or two of a VI-assisted transit."

"That would not surprise me. The ensign here can do almost as well as the _Normandy's_ AI doing the same transit, which is about the same time as your estimate. Pilot, you look a little incredulous."

Nicolaev _was_ incredulous, but he had also seen the reaction time of Eva when sprinting for the controls. Not to mention the video of the way she dealt with that lunatic in the shuttle bay. _And_ he was obscurely aware that he was being tested in some manner.

Shepard affirmed:

"It's quite true. Even I could get close, Lieutenant, and I last flew a ship of any size nearly five years ago. But Eva, you will find… is in a class of her own."

"If you say so, Captain."

Shepard gave his pilot a long look. "I do say. But the main point I want you to grasp, pilot, is that _you are not indispensable to the ship_. Have you got that?"

Nicolaev licked his lips and glanced at his Admiral, who nodded soberly.

"Yes sir."

"Good. Also, _the ship is not indispensable to you_. I've already died once, returning to pick up a stubborn pilot who _would not_ leave a replaceable machine; and the same pilot effectively killed an AI because he _would not_ leave a replaceable person."

"Sir, yes sir." _So_ that's _what this is all about_ , thought the pilot. _To hell with_ _them_.

"Excellent. Pilot, you may leave your station. Eva, are you ready? Go."

Eva buckled herself into the pilot's seat, and Bogdan into the co-pilot's.

"Sound transit stations."

Behind them a shuffle of activity as the crew buckled themselves into crash webbing. Mikhailovich glanced at Shepard, who nodded, and they retreated to the galaxy map then shook hands. Mikhailovich took the lift to his crash bed in the loft. Shepard at last declared;

"Bring the AI on-line Eva, but remember piloting is a test of your mobile. I'm about to go below and get into bed with, ah, Hannigan. Finally."

" _Sir, very funny sir. Don't forget you share the XO's office, sir. On-line."_

The holographic displays on _North Cape_ came up, including the CIC galaxy map.

"Very well. The instant the last crash webbing tell-tale lights, try a standard polished L-1 to S-1 transit, but remember we're dropping freight at Gagarin. Shepard out."

…

Nicolaev had observed the new AI haptic displays from his co-pilot's seat. Captain Shepard had vanished down the elevator. He heard Eva's voice say: _"Five. Four. Three. Two. One. MARK."_ Her fingers twitched over thruster haptics. _North Cape_ swooped.

 _"Transit minus sixty seconds." North Cape_ dipped again, towards Mare Crisium and the lights of Luna City. _"Transit minus forty seconds_ … _"_

Nicolaev looked over at pilot Eva, expecting to see her announce the next time.

 _"Transit minus_ _twenty seconds_ … _"_ … well that was her (rather sexy) voice … but _her lips hadn't moved_. Bogdan stared in mounting horror.

 _"Transit minus_ _ten_ _seconds."_

Pilot Eva's head turned slowly; looked him dead in the eye; and offered a huge beaming grin. Her disembodied voice echoed in the cockpit: _"_ _Commit."_

Lieutenant Bogdan Pavlovich Nicolaev, child of superstitious parents, screamed like a little girl just as _North Cape_ passed through L-1 _._

It took two hot toddys before Hannigan could get him to stop mumbling, " _Русалка._ "

* * *

 _Next chapter: #87, "Beware! Beware!"_

* * *

Friday, August 14, 2015


	4. Beware! Beware!

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 87 **Beware! Beware!**

* * *

 _Hohlraum_

The conference room in _North Cape_ , near the war chamber, differed from that of _Normandy_ in detail, but had the same transparent walls – so Jana saw at once that Shepard and Chambers were already seated there.

"Oh no. Would you please have your chaplain say a prayer for my soul?"

Mikhailovich knew Jana was, in the jargon of the day, 'protheist' in the sense that she felt the universe to be run by an incompetent god. But she was aggressively atheist in the sense that she did not believe in souls. The Admiral, too, enjoyed gallows humor:

"You think this is bad, doctor? At a suitable moment I will be withdrawing the control rods from the pile. A good test." Jana emitted a slightly hysterical laugh:

"What, _all three_ of them are here?"

"And Shepard. Yes. It is the only way, doctor." They entered the glass room and engaged the security field. "But we begin with what you asked me to do in Limbo."

 _Implosion_

Jana sat and shivered, causing Kelly to look at her oddly. On the wall vidscreen, the admiral brought up an excerpted video and audio of his last conversation with Jana in Limbo: _Put Shepard on ice, too. For a rainy day… Do_ something _about Chambers."_

Then he retreated to the far end of the room, and inclined his head fractionally. _Proceed._ Jana had already put her face in her hands at the hot, high-pressure gaze from Shepard; so she missed Chambers putting her hand over his clenched fist.

 _I'm listening,_ said Captain Shepard, through gritted teeth. His fist unclenched, and Chambers' hand slipped back to his wrist.

Jana put her hands palm down on the table, composed herself, and declared: _I fear we will need you: and I fear for all of us, with Chambers and her sisters around._

"We?" _–_ asked Shepard.

"By 'we', and 'us', I don't just mean humans. Kill me now if you must, Captain. But there is context you should know."

Shepard frowned. "That would be these 'Sisters?'" He felt Kelly's grasp on his wrist tighten ever so slightly. She leaned towards his shoulder, saying quietly:

"Not really sisters, Shepard. My sisters are dead. I _think_ Jana means people in some ways like me."

"There's no-one quite like you."

"True enough. All humans are unique, even identical twins–"

"–That's not what I meant."

"John, do you recall Brooks? Hope Lilium, when I knew her? Jana, am I right?"

"You know you are."

"Kelly, wait. You knew Brooks? That syrupy con artist, peddling innocence?"

"Yes. And Jana. Who also knew Brooks well, _before_ she left Cerberus with a bang."

"Brooks is no sister to you. You don't resemble each other."

"John. To my mortal shame, I have to tell you: she most certainly is. Both of us have a set of – gifts, perhaps. And neither of us has used them as wisely or well as we might. For getting people to see things our way. Amongst, um, other things."

John Shepard gave his girl a cool on-mission look.

"Except when you look at us like that. Then it doesn't work. That's _your_ gift."

Shepard shook his head. "No. There are differences; you can admit to such things; Brooks can't. Also, I've never known you to hurt a living soul where you had a choice. There are other points of difference, but I will _not_ go into that right now. Admiral, I gather the context of Jana's remarks really was that she feared for civilization?"

Mikhailovich considered this. "That is a fair assessment."

Shepard leaned back, folding his arms. "I can give that idea head room, for a short time. First though: Jana, you said _sisters_. Plural. There's more than just Brooks."

Jana began to answer, but Chambers coughed: "John. There's one on this ship."

"What!? Where? Who?"

"In our stateroom, Shepard. The old XO's office. She was changing Felicia when I left – don't look at me like that, _please_ , she's as pure as the driven Russian snow and I swear she'd defend Felicia with her life."

Mikhailovich nodded. Shepard visibly relaxed a little. "Alright. I have a _little_ faith."

"Except she tells me to call her Maria – in English. Won't say the patronymic, in fact won't speak Russian to me at all, so…"

"An assumed name."

"One assumes so. I think one might assume wrong. It's not uncommon among young folk to avoid the patronymic and just use the given name. But here? Surprising."

The Admiral clapped. "Bravo, Chambers. You exceed all my expectations. Which, I have to tell you, were excruciatingly high after the incident with _'Billy'_. How long have you known, may I ask?"

"The instant she was handed Felicia for feeding. She looked at me. I looked at her. We both knew. It's very hard to explain…"

"Don't then."

"…Like color to a blind man."

"I take it back, that was actually useful." The Admiral leaned forward, tapped his ear for local encrypted comm:

"Brooks. Maria. Come. We are ready for you."

 _Criticality_

Maria was first to turn up, bringing Felicia from their stateroom on the same floor. _That's the kid at the comm board_ , realized Shepard. Brooks arrived moments later, offered Shepard a rueful grin, and stood beside the admiral.

Maria nodded at Jana; glanced at the Admiral; passing Felicia to Kelly, she favored Shepard with a shy smile. Kelly joined in.

The whole scene seemed to glow. Shepard caught his breath. Jana gasped.

Then Maria sat down, clasped her hands on the table, and looked around brightly, awaiting events. Shepard stole a look at Mikhailovich; _he_ seemed a little stunned, turning slowly to Brooks, now at parade rest, grinning at him:

"Never seen that before, Admiral? I'm too bitter and twisted for that, lately."

Mikhailovich exhaled a long, slow, breath. "So, Shepard. You get that every day?"

"If I've been good. Sometimes it plugs directly into the libido."

"Perhaps I was a little hard on Jana."

"There might perhaps be some legitimate reason for concern, yes. I refuse to believe that of Kelly, and I suspect you refuse to believe it of Maria. Rightly. But Brooks…"

"Wait, what? I'm feeling quite well disposed to the admiral. He did get me out."

"You see? Now, is Brooks up to speed on Jana's perilous recommendations?"

"No. Maya, the good doctor here would have me squirrel Shepard away for 'a rainy day', neutralize Ms Chambers in some way, and make an end of _you_."

"Okay. The last one I comprehend. The first two are not going to happen, and what about Maria here?"

"I'm supposed let nature take its course."

"Oho. Maria, get Chambers to explain. Or your admiral. Might actually work. When do I get the bullet, Peter?"

"You don't. We should now bring up the reason for you being sprung from Limbo."

"You know, in the rush I missed that?"

"I did not inform you. If you would all kindly follow me, I would like you to meet two broken people. I have Trevor and Lisa in the med bay, Maya. Jana?"

"I'm about ready to show that diagnostic session with the brain scans, Admiral. If it takes years, we will put them together again. I have a plan."

"Good. But that depends on _all_ of you being alive, awake, and alert. And that, Shepard, includes Jana. Does she live?"

"I would have a word with Jana in private. With Kelly. But yes, she lives."

 _Close your eyes with holy dread_

After the drama of the last few hours the last thing Admiral Mikhailovich wanted to see was a _Priority_ flash on his private terminal in the loft. Before tackling that he shaved and washed, noting uncomfortably how grey and fatigued he looked. _Getting old._

It was Hackett.

" _Peter, I have important news."_

"Good, or bad?"

" _We're not sure yet. Man, you look terrible. What's been happening over there?"_

"Are we on a secure line? Yes, I see we are. Briefly, Steven, Shepard was the target of what amounted to an amateurish but dangerous bomb."

" _Bomb!"_

"Set to go off deep in the bowels of the ship. Engineers made it safe, Eva defused it; I'm told it wouldn't have been fatal but _North Cape_ might have lost propulsion."

" _Holy… wait, Terra Firma? Indoctrinated?"_

"Not those. Shepard cottoned on to him, I still don't have the full story. No terrorist, some kind of criminal, Shepard gave me a summary but there's been a lot happening and I haven't grasped it all. The worst part was his _wife_ made me the instrument of _her_ execution of the hooligan – in such a way that it was self-defence. Shepard told me afterwards she did it to prevent him executing the bastard out of hand."

" _That's… characteristic. Is it all over?"_

"Not really. The SOB had been processed by our criminal pathology clinics."

" _Oh. Them. Hang on… How did he still even remember who he was, let alone be still a psychopath?"_

"That's the point. And there was this other thing. She wove a circle 'round him thrice and told me exactly what the CrimPath people missed. Among other things, he was some sort of mutant, so they clipped the wrong parts of the brain."

" _Wait, what? 'Wove a circle 'round him thrice?'"_

"Coleridge, man. Look, Shepard's girl neutralized a dangerous man of defective memory. Don't anglophones read their literature anymore? But I mean it, she really did slowly walk around him three times, I _think_ it was a kind of hypnosis."

" _Hannah's listening. She says it'll be some sort of data-gathering or diagnostic."_

"As God is my witness, I'm not sure just _what_ it was, but it was spooky as hell."

" _We've seen her in action. I'm not sure what you saw, but I believe you."_

"Good, you might have some notion of what I mean, then. Steven, your man Shepard is a scary son of a bitch, you know that. But I tell you, his woman is _scarier_. Half my crew were crossing themselves afterwards. And the sequel didn't help."

" _Sequel? Oh no… Did Hannigan do something else spooky?"_

"Not exactly, except I introduced her to Brooks and Maria. In Shepard's presence. There was a brief demonstration of skills. I had to lie down afterwards."

" _What were you thinking?!"_

"My hand was forced. The upshot is, Brooks will work on reversing Reaper indoctrination with Jana."

" _Good. Did Hannigan fit in? And Maria?"_

"My crew's decided she's some kind of angel. I mean seriously."

" _Oh dear. Let me know if this becomes a problem. As for Maria–"_

"Actually the effect is sort of positive, and Maria so far fits in. But they also think Ensign Eva Coré is a sort of spirit, facts notwithstanding."

" _That's fixable. Just tell them Eva's the ship AI."_

"The way that bloody AI played with the mind of my pilot didn't help. He was a very bad boy, but I'm not sure he deserved Eva's aversion therapy. Look, what's this news?"

" _My media contacts and spies tell me that the UNAS President – "_

"Chris Huerta? The zombie?"

"– _him, yes. The state governors cornered him over an Article V convention. Huerta's announced to media under embargo, just the day before getting on his Air Force transport ship for Arcturus Station, that he's going to implement the convention as direct democracy by secure electronic vote."_

"So the public votes for its congressmen and senators electronically, big deal. In Russia we'd been doing that for over a century."

" _He's talking_ binding referendums _. On the content of the constitution! Never mind legal scholars sitting in a room and imposing their vision. And he's proposing to apply it to elections as well. Things like recall of elected officers, by national_ and state _vote."_

"He can't do the states without changing their individual constitutions too. At the federal level, you're going to get a bunch of uneducated housewives running the country by instant messaging, and that's the best-case scenario."

" _I guess we'll find out. He's also proposing a court of cassation to break electronic votes which are at cross purposes. More important, he's actually implemented it. He's put the infrastructure in place over the last week."_

"How would that work?"

" _If two referendums are passed giving different results the public will have to vote on which one it wants. As well, he wants an electronic supreme court sitting over the nine judges – if the public doesn't like an interpretation, they're going to be able to say so by_ instant _digital vote and make it stick – "_

"Hah. Justice really will be of the people, by the people, for the people."

" _Subject again to cassation, making them choose which of the incompatible options they want."_

"Even so, dear God, there will be war. Except there's _already_ a civil war there."

" _Exactly, the third so far, but it doesn't stop trade or the economy. Thing is Peter, the nation's in an uproar, so are its neighbors, and he's about to get on a ship and go. With the Veep."_

"Who's running the country while they're gone?"

" _The secretary of state, that's not a problem, except he's going full speed ahead on the electronic voting. It'll be in place_ before _the Governors force a convention."_

"That convention will be almost a coup!"

" _Except it's within the letter of the constitution it's about to change. Think of it as a revolution."_

"I know a coup when I see one. Even if it's in reverse."

" _And on that subject, you have your own problems._ _Tevos wants to speak with you._ _"_

"Anything to do with _Normandy_ and _North Cape_ being joined by _Pegasus_?

" _Yes, Liara T'Soni is commanding. I'll get her to fill you in at Gagarin."_

"The Shadow Broker. My own interview. Cool."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #88, "The Great Game, revisited"_

* * *

Friday, August 14, 2015


	5. The Great Game, revisited

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 88 **The Great Game, revisited**

* * *

 _S_ _tanding_

Brooks and Hannigan broke the Eva = Ship AI news to the pilot, in the cause of relieving Nicolaev's bad case of nerves, on the way to Gagarin, in the med bay. XO Czernykh and Dr Jana were also present, so the pilot vented at _them_. Error.

"I tell you, Commander, she – it – the voice – did it on purpose."

"Yes, of course, deliberately," said Jana coolly. "You had worked that out, surely?"

Hannigan, busy taking Nicolaev's blood pressure and other diagnostics, cast a beseeching glance at Jana, who ignored it. Czernykh broke in:

"We're not daft, Doctor. You might have told the ship commander, you know."

"We did. The Admiral and Captain were aware of the install. This is a shakedown voyage, Commander. I do apologize though, we should also have informed the XO, that is, you."

Nicolaev objected: "You could have told _me_." But Jana shook her head:

"I think not. By 'deliberately' I meant Eva chose _that_ way of telling _you_ she's an AI. I wonder why? Surely, making a point. At the behest of the Captain, I suspect."

Czernykh acknowledged this. "We have already had this discussion. The pilot is not to regard this vessel as 'his' ship."

"In any event, this was a need-to-know situation. Anything could have gone wrong. There are good reasons, not just morale reasons, not to advertise new capability in advance of testing it. AIs are no exception."

Czernykh agreed: "I understand that. Still, morale stubbed its toe a little when Bogdan screamed. Also, crew practically jump out of their skins the first time they ask the ship's VI to do something, and Eva's voice talks back."

"Fortunately that's less of a problem now," said Hannigan. "News like Eva travels fast. But you have a point. For some reason people call _me_ , first time it happens."

"Well duh, instead of the Captain. You're an approachable interface to Shepard, of course. Alexander Olegovich, that's your job, you need to step up there."

"I know. I have tried. The crew now realize Evas' voice is the ship speaking."

"I encouraged the commander to go around the divisions," explained Hannigan. "It looks like many crew are already happily conversing with Eva's disembodied voice. It can't have taken long to know they weren't dealing with a turian VI anymore."

"On the other hand," complained Nicolaev, " _they_ didn't have their co-pilot grinning at them while her voice resounded from around their heads."

"As I recall, at the time, she was in the _pilot's_ seat," noted Czernykh.

"All right! I have to work with the AI to pilot the ship. I got that, OK?"

Commander Czernykh clicked his tongue: " _Tsk_. You are looking at this the wrong way, Bogdan Pavlovich. She _is_ the ship."

"What?"

"The first thing you said to the Captain was that you could not allow something to be done ' _on your ship_.' Remember?"

"Yes. I realize that was silly, okay?"

"Silly! Captain Shepard was on the point of throwing you to the crows. You know which crows I mean, Lieutenant?" The Lieutenant looked extremely uncomfortable.

"Yes, sir. I guess it's _his_ ship… the hardware at least, but… "

– and here, Jana interrupted:

"Wrong again. The hardware is _hers_ , I mean Eva's. _We_ are just commensals, along for the ride. Cerberus and the Alliance collectively haven't had a lot of experience with AIs on board ship, and there's only been one on a frigate, but it's taught us one thing: _t_ _o an AI, t_ _he ship is_ _her_ _body_. One of them, anyway."

"Doesn't seem fair. One body wears out, she can get another."

"Human bodies grow themselves. Mechanical prototypes cost millions. But there's a good point. Does the Commander here own your body? Does the Captain?"

"No. I'm not a slave."

"Exactly. We can give orders, but your bodies are your own, Bogdan Pavlovich," said Czernykh. "Or are they? I suppose one might argue that the Alliance, or in your case the Russian Federation at least, has a mortgage on them."

"I belong to me!" declared the outraged pilot. "Mine is mine, and hers is hers."

"At least until the Admiral forecloses on the mortgage and you are given to the crows," said Jana. "Trust me Lieutenant, that is an outcome to be avoided."

"What this all amounts to, Bogdan Pavlovich, is that you can order the AI to perform an action as the ship, for _she_ is a lowly ensign – for now – and you are a lieutenant. For now."

"I know." From the expression on the pilot's face, the qualification had not escaped him. "I guess… rank notwithstanding, we fly the ship, surely?"

" _Together._ Consider what happens if she gets a promotion, hm?"

"I'd ask the Captain if there's a problem. Or you."

"Fine. But if you have to run to mommy to resolve a route dispute, Lieutenant, you are a sorry specimen. Same applies to you, Eva. Are you listening?"

" _Yes, Commander."_

 _Interesting times_

Shepard took the co-pilot controls for the final approach to Jump Zero (Gagarin Station), at Eva's request. Protocol demanded human supervision for a moving (albeit very slowly) dock, as Gagarin was; and their designated human pilot was, as Jana put it u/s ("unserviceable"), pending counseling by Jana (bad psychic cop) and Hannigan (good psychic cop).

This suited Shepard fine, as filling in for Bogdan allowed him to accumulate sufficient recent flying hours to have his flight warrant re-validated.

There was a shortish queue of vessels for the freight dock and some time to wait, so Eva resumed responsibility on arrival, whereupon her mobile _and_ Shepard went to visit the poor boy. But they were sidetracked at the elevator by Admiral Mikhailovich, who asked to see them in the loft.

"Captain, how was your rating flight?"

"Nice and boring, Admiral. Eva?"

"The Captain is perfectly capable, Admiral, but a little out of practice. I recommend further training by means of staging through relay jumps. These are a good mixture of high- and low-speed operations in a complex gravitational environment."

"I'll take your word for it. Eva, are you aware that to the crew you are now an object of some superstitious dread?"

"I hadn't thought about it. Is this a bad thing?"

"…On the whole I would say it is bad for morale. Please do everyone a favour and be nice to Pilot Nicolaev. He has been given a merciless drubbing by some real experts. It would be good for your image if the crew were to see you show him some mercy."

"Very well, Admiral. I would not dream of disappointing you."

"That is appreciated." Mikhailovich turned to Shepard:

"Captain, I have been advised by Hackett that before leaving the UNAS, Huerta has ordered universal suffrage in the form of electronic voting, an obligatory referendum on federal statutes when 66% of voters submit a demand electronically, and electronic secure vote to be the _decisive_ element of sovereign decisions, court of cassation for conflicting votes to again be referred to electronic vote, and so forth."

"Good God!"

"We live in interesting times, Captain. Dismissed."

 _Truck stop_

Jump Zero – Gagarin Station – had no artificial gravity when first built. It was still supplemented by rotation, which meant that those areas closest to the axis had comparatively light gravity, which turned out to be useful for certain purposes.

Mikhailovich was appreciating that low gravity now, in the conference room chosen by the Shadow Broker.

Dr T'Soni had been so thoughtful as to provide a security bubble, and a sort of Devonshire tea, from an honest-to-god _zavarka_ pot at that, sitting on top of an antique nickel-plated _samovar_.

"My dear Liara, if it was your intention to get a better price for your secrets by buttering me up with cream scones and tea, I have to tell you…"

Mikhailovich took a sip. Dear God, she'd put in some honey and more than a trace of… vodka? It was hard to be sure, most vodkas had taste but little odor, and the alcohol boiled off really fast in a mixture with hot water, as this most certainly was.

"… it's succeeding, confound it."

Liara dimpled at him. "I was told you'd had a rough time, and this might put you at your ease. Relax, Admiral, the first item on the agenda at least is Alliance business so does not involve credits."

"Ah. I'd heard you didn't sell anything you learned from Shepard."

"It goes a little deeper than that, Pyotr."

"You don't sell Alliance secrets?"

"I'm on special retainer to the Council, but there are qualifications: I won't compromise my relationship with Shepard or Hackett, and that means certain things are off-limits even to Councilor Tevos."

"She understands this?"

"Asari are very sensitive to this sort of web of trust, Admiral."

"I see. I think. Well, what can I do for you?"

"Actually, Admiral, it is a matter of what I can do for you. But first, in the last half an hour there has been a development with the UNAS President."

"Has he arrived?"

"He is not coming to Jump Zero, Admiral, but proceeded directly to Arcturus Station. His vessel has already proceeded through gate L-1 then almost at once through S-1 and A-1. Unfortunately, his medical prostheses reacted badly."

"Holy Mary, Mother of God. Is he alive?"

"The multiple wormhole shocks seem to have induced some sort of seizure. When checked, he was out of it. I mean, his mind was gone. But he breathes."

"This will be some VI malfunction?"

"Well, he is conscious. He is not functioning well, but as you guessed his medics think at least the initial cause was a VI catastrophe."

"Hmm. His UNAS vessel – Space Force One – is not military, but a converted luxury yacht."

"Indeed, Admiral, and many of its systems were… disturbed during transit. Other UNAS ships passing the relay had no such problems, but _they_ are conduit-format freighters or military frigates."

"Clearly a shielding failure, then."

"That would be a reasonable surmise, yes. No other humans on the President's vessel are obviously affected. Except the Vice-President, who has taken it badly."

"Unfortunate. What's the plan?"

"Treatment at Arcturus Station, and then we shall see. Admiral Hackett will meet the Vice-President as planned; while the President is incapacitated, she is the Commander in Chief of the UNAS."

"Very well. I appreciate the heads-up, but this does not appear to call for action on my part."

"No. The next item however, the original reason for this briefing, is more difficult."

"Hackett hinted at something involving a revolution."

"You could call it that. Admiral…" _Uh-Oh. Now I'm 'Admiral'_ _again_.

"…what is your relationship with your brother?"

 _The hole in the zero_

Brooks had stayed quiet throughout. Finally, Czernykh left with Nicolaev for tea at the commissary (not for his benefit – the crew discharged their stress by heartily teasing their pilot). With only Jana and Kelly present, Brooks felt able to comment on Eva:

"Jana. You know what's _really_ peculiar about these AIs? There's no nothing."

"How gnomic. What might that mean?"

"Chambers knows. Kelly, back me up here." Chambers sighed, remembering Legion.

"Jana, most personal-assistance mechs don't have the facial expressions, nor the lilt in EDI's voice when she's telling a joke, nor the little hand-waving of everyday conversation. They're like black holes – they absorb every signal, reflecting nothing."

"Ah. Well, our cell put that in. _These_ AIs use supporting hardware and firmware."

 _Shadows_

Mikhailovich was staggered, despite the vodka-laced tea.

" _Where the hell did_ that _come from?"_

"I ask, Admiral, because for the next item of information I may give you, I must exact a price."

"I thought you neither bought nor sold Alliance secrets."

"These are not Alliance secrets. And I never mentioned anything about money."

"Just a… price. I see."

"Not yet you don't. Part of the price is, Admiral, that you must answer my question."

"You mean… our relationship, besides our being identical twins?"

"Yes. Did you not break with the _Knights of Remembrance_ , so-called, three years ago? And is not Boris still a member?"

"Not really, there is essentially no power structure of that mob left."

"There is Boris."

" _He_ was never an indoctrinated traitor to the motherland."

"What happened to the 'mob'?"

"The ringleaders suffered a traitor's penalty. Take my advice and do not ask what that entails."

"So you _did_ break with them."

"Boris tipped me off to some misbehavior by the Moskva Oblast steering committee. There were discrepancies in the Interior Ministry's investigation which caused me to mount an _in-Russia_ investigation of the FBU by GRU personnel. Doctor T'Soni… you have been calling me Admiral. Should I be calling you "Shadow Broker?"

"We are trading confidences, so far, Peter. Not secrets."

Mikhailovich wondered what the difference was. Well, there was clearly a difference to her.

"Liara, I have just told you something which would allow my enemies to demand my head."

"Yes. I know. We are beyond that price, Peter. Please proceed."

"Very well. There were elements of the Interior Ministry, who were also members of the secret society we have been discussing, who had taken patentable technology from the Collectors in exchange for state secrets. Please do not ask what I did with them."

"I must ask what you did with Boris, Admiral."

"I asked Hackett to post him far away. As far as Boris is aware, his old collaborators died in the war with the Reapers. Which, in a way, is perfectly true."

"He was unaware of their activities?"

"Boris was not of their inner circle."

"Thank you, Admiral, that is what I needed to know…"

The Asari indulged in a reflective silence. "I had been afraid that I would have to offer you a choice."

"Between what?"

"Your brother's life, or your country's, or your own."

"Please explain."

Liara checked the status of the security bubble. Yes, even the autotranslator net was off.

"Admiral, I can tell you this. By means which I am not at liberty to disclose, the UNAS had broken into certain systems of the Salarian STG, and by other means which I am also not at liberty to disclose, we became privy to those secrets. Before those holes were patched – and the revelations made certain Salarian bloodlines vanish, I can tell you – we discovered the revolution, or coup, Hackett warned you of. Briefly, did you think the leader of the _Knights of Remembrance_ survived?"

"I did not have him killed, as such. He was sent to Baba Yaga's cabin."

"Dalatrass Linron had a mole there. He's back. We're not sure the warder knew."

Mikhailovich shuddered in a kind of ecstasy of anger, suppressed with great difficulty.

" _Григ_ _о́_ _рий Квинитадзе._ What does _he_ have to do with Boris?"

"To oversimplify, there is to be an accident waiting for you on your return, and they will propose your own brother as sock puppet pending your recovery. Which will happen – _after_ you have both been ministered to by their indoctrination experts. Except that _gospodin_ Kvinitadze did not yet know that Boris ratted him out, and were he to find out…"

"This is what comes of allowing the Salarians access to our indoctrinated people."

"Indeed."

"Hackett did warn me about this."

"He did."

"I have been a blind, deaf, and dumb fool."

"No. You trusted the Salarian dalatrass."

"As I said."

Mikhailovich leaned forward on the table, till his forehead touched the wood – it was real cloned mahogany – and closed his eyes.

"Admiral. Pyotr. _Are you alright?_ "

"My dear Dr T'Soni, I must leave at once and organize a hunt for this _сукин сын_."

"That will not be necessary."

"I'm sorry?"

"You were to return to London, right?"

"Yes."

"We ascertained they were waiting for you, there, and got in touch with Special Branch, who got in touch with the SIS. One Colonel Padraig is keeping both the hit man and Grigory Kvinitadze…"

"Oh, glory to God."

"…in what he describes as a very special little seaside village in Wales."

Admiral Mikhailovich sat in silence for a moment, eyes closed.

"What do I owe you for this, Shadow Broker?"

"The Shadow Broker is not here at this time, Peter. Have another scone."

 _Absence as evidence_

"You wouldn't believe how much processing power is needed to mimic a face."

Brooks pondered Jana's revelations and found a flaw: "I never really met EDI, not for any length of time, but her reactions seemed to be a bit low-res." But Chambers disagreed:

"I asked about that. Her mobile lost its skin. Some fine details of expression were expressed by tiny synthflesh muscle fascia. Eva's new mobile still has it."

"Ah. Okay. So why don't hundreds of thousands of personal assistance mechs?"

"They don't have synthflesh at all, their skin's completely synthetic. They don't have the custom processors or firmware for it either. That's fantastically expensive unless you standardize on one body plan, like Alliance infiltrators. The skin costs, too."

Jana added:

"People have been working on this in academia for hundreds of years, Brooks. But the only commercial outlet was sex toys, for which not a lot of detail is needed. Until Jack Harper decided he wanted infiltration units which could hack systems and if necessary have their mobiles sacrificed, without losing the AI or the information."

"Okay." Brooks thought a bit. "Jana, something I bet Chambers hasn't told you." (Now Chambers was shaking her head, _nonononono! Don't!_ ) "But the Admiral would want you to know: Eva likes her pilot. And her pilot _really, really_ likes Eva."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #89, "Hail to the Chief"_

* * *

Friday, August 14, 2015


	6. Hail to the Chief

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 89 **Hail to the Chief**

* * *

 _Arcturus_

The three frigates ( _Normandy, North Cape_ , and _Pegasus_ ) jumped from S-1 to A-1, mounted on Eunomia at 24 astronomical units from the system star. Arcturus' radius is nearly twenty times that of Sol, despite having nearly the same mass. Were it to replace Sol, Arcturus' surface would be a fifth of the way towards the Earth. It is a very hot star – red giant – so the Goldilocks zone is accordingly quite far out.

This was important for the station and its mines. Arcturus Station was being rebuilt, in short, on the cold side of Arcturus' Goldilocks zone. Dike – not a planet, but a brown dwarf first detected in the 1990s – lies at Themis' _listed_ distance of 3.5AU. (Ever-unreliable, the extranet's galactic codex has displaced orbital radii for all the planets of the Arcturus system, with consequent nonsensical harmonic ratios for the planets – though of course the Alliance military ephemerides contained no such error). Themis is actually at the orbital radius (6.8AU) listed for Eirene.

Were it in the Solar System, Themis would be orbiting between Jupiter and Saturn, and it is accordingly a gas giant, but warmer than usual; Arcturus has a bolometric magnitude 180 times that of Sol, so Themis (and Arcturus station, at its L5 point) receives at least half the insolation of Earth. Themis' asteroid mines are therefore hot, at times unlivable, depending on the eccentricity of their orbits.

Following verification that proton storms were absent, the ships filed through A-2 to a satellite of Eirene (at 13.4AU), then through A-3 to orbit around Themis, at 6.8 AU from the system primary. Orbiting a red giant, Themis was within the 'frost line'.

The four frigates did not exit relay A-2 running silent; they were in friendly space. It would take an hour or so to close with the station, which despite being quite habitable now did not have a relay of its own, yet. The close proximity of refined metal in the debris of the Reaper destruction meant that ore-transport from asteroids was not a bottleneck for construction of the still-skeletal new station.

Hackett's intel from traffic nexus chatter was that the UNAS flotilla had already docked at the station. This prompted him to order all relevant personnel – mainly officers – into ceremonial dress uniform or civilian formal wear for the reception. Formal wear for the men was easy – black tie, or equivalent – but many had been expecting to shop at Gagarin _before_ the guest of honor arrived.

So Shepard had retrieved the suit he wore to Hock's wingding from _Normandy_. Cortez was tempted to go in his replica _traje de luces_ , was talked out of it by Vega, but resumed that plan when Hackett heard about it and permitted dress of ethnic origin. Dress uniform was an option; but officers rarely carried that on vessels smaller than heavy cruiser – and even then, ceremonial clothes tended to be sealed in tinfoil, for diplomatic emergencies where necessary to uphold Service honor.

For others, panic ensued. All over the flotilla, there was a rush on the fabs as dozens of throats cried: " _What_ am I going to _wear?_ "

 _Gadfly romance_

It was late into second dog before all three frigates were duly docked. There was a small reception committee for _North Cape_. Goldstein chattered with Hannigan all the way to their quarters. She at least had wangled permission to be present.

Others hadn't.

A touching moment came when Gabby Daniels ran down the _Normandy's_ dockway straight into the arms of an AWOL Donnelly at the docking gate, to the delight of Oriana's news crew.

That was immediately followed by a moment of bathos; Gabby ran her boot down his shin, on discovering Ken had 'wagged' classes to be there. Oriana guessed (rightly) that this would drive ratings almost as much as the initial embrace. Hackett, unimpressed, nonetheless granted ex post facto leave in the interest of service morale.

Hannah laughed all the way to their suite.

 _Low_ _level programming_

Back in crew quarters, Maria was attempting to lever herself into her tight casino dress. Being a lowly NCO she had not expected to be called to the ball but the Admiral's orders were explicit. So she'd buttonholed Brooks and got her to help.

"That's it. You're done up at the back. Now turn around for me." Which Maria did, _pirouette en pointe_ , long wine-coloured hair flying. Brooks stared. "Saints on high, girl, do you dance too?" Maria briefly looked a little puzzled. What did Brooks mean, _"too?"_ Oh. Of course.

"After school, every day. It's quite common among professional families. You?"

"Not called for around the Themis refineries. Barely room to move below, hot enough to melt lead above ground and no air anyway. It's hard being so close to that. I thought I'd escaped forever."

The girl had the grace to wince.

"Sorry. My family was fairly well off. Of course now they're all dead and I starved. That doesn't make us even… but I can understand you'd resent the life I had."

"Do you?"– asked Brooks, a little bitterly. _Now_ the girl put her hands on hips, saying:

"Yes. I only have to look at you. But I'll not apologize for my life, even to you," violet eyes flashing. All this rocked Brooks back on her heels a little, but she recovered:

"My," (still a little bitterly,) "Mikhailovich's rose has thorns." Then Brooks had a thought: "You're an NCO. Why are you at the ball? The admiral called you out as his escort?"

"No. He's relieved me of aide-de-camp duties. I _think_ someone told him it was age-inappropriate. I'm to make sure pilot Nicolaev doesn't commit some ghastly _faux pas_."

"Good, he won't be watching Eva. He'll only have eyes for you." Maria smirked:

"He's not for me. Eva's not for him. _You're_ supposed to be the admiral's aide, this time. _Ukaz_ from on high. This will be entertaining. Your uniform is badged, _'Rasa Lila'_."

* * *

 _High level programming_

UNAS medical staff had been perturbed that their President was to have critical parts of his hindbrain replaced with layer-3 modules thoughtfully provided by the Alliance, at the same time as Alliance staff helped UNAS techs install a secure EMP and particle shield within the presidential cabin on Space Force One.

When asked by the UNAS doctors about the lucky circumstance of replacement parts being available, Hackett mildly observed that the ongoing AI build program for the Normandy class frigates meant such parts were in stock from Synthetic Insights and its competitors. Specifications could easily be verified from those outfits.

 _Of course. How silly of us_.

The UNAS doctors and technicians consulted the Alliance personnel – mostly also UNAS citizens – who assisted them with catalogs. They checked the supplied modules – qubit femto‑refresh RAM, programmable planar filamentary arrays, etc. against the SI catalog in particular, and found nothing out of the ordinary except the expense – not a consideration at this time.

One tech did scratch his head over the presence of a quantum entanglement communicator in a spinal communication node, and even asked his supervisor what the purpose of that might be; that worthy checked the catalog and found one medical use was to innervate across a gap in the spinal cord pending regrowth. Forget it, he said, the doctors probably won't even bring it on-line.

Just before the VP reception began at 2100 hours, there was a preliminary meet-and-greet session with each side's entourage. The President had just come off the operating table and appeared much improved. His staff hastened to give the good news to the VP.

* * *

 _Viridian and Silver_

Pyotr Mikhailovich took one look at the unaccustomed yellow finery on Hannah Shepard and Liara, to say nothing of the pale shimmering blue of Nurse Hannigan's arachnid silks, and nearly had a fit. Kelly counted as crew but the Admiral demanded to know if any of his normal crew had any similar duds. The first answer was "no".

However, after much elbow-prodding by Hannigan, his young comms chief had produced a simple but elegant black casino dress, and two of her colleagues were able to produce – using the on-board fabs – a set of updated red brocade tunics reminiscent of Ryazan-style _sarafans_ , rather beautifully puffy, and also warm.

Ensign Eva also wore her viridian silks (for the first time in public) as part of _North Cape's_ party; the Admiral felt the honor of the boat was satisfied.

Asari, humans, and some turian representatives mingled happily till the President arrived, looking a bit wan and occupying a wheelchair at the insistence of hs medics, but waving and chatting for the newsies.

His presidential address extolled the progress made on rebuilding Arcturus Station.

A third of the shell was enclosed, with the torus structural skeleton complete. Given mechs and debris of the previous station easily to hand, the reconstruction was expected to take only another four years; around the same time that Thessia would be relinked to the Citadel, and only three years after Palaven now. This played well to an older population segment, especially to those in high-wealth areas, desperate for any hint that prosperity might return soon.

Shepard and Liara, discussing the matter quietly with Tevos, felt it would – but in the year and a half since the Red Flash, the world's population had actually _dropped_ another twelve hundred million, courtesy starvation, cold, disease, and internecine war. Still, matters were improving though most people were living a hand-to-mouth existence, day to day, on those areas of Planet Earth where there was still some civilization at all, usually those of comparatively low population density.

In many places that population wasn't thinned enough yet.

QEC bulletins from Thessia also showed widespread suffering, as did Palaven, but neither had suffered quite the same destruction as Earth, for the simple reason that the Reaper forces were concentrated under the Citadel, and they appeared focused on wiping the entire species from existence. Of course, Earth had twice the population of other home planets to begin with, so from (say) a turian perspective, the balance had been restored.

However, turians and asari had huge colonies, and huge numbers of them. Humans did not. Earth was a basket containing nearly half their developed eggs.

Tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of small colonies were now totally isolated and their industries failing for want of the web of parts and support. Those in the Terminus systems barely kept in touch anyway. The few with working QEC nodes had described a descent into barbarism before falling silent. Only a handful – the largest, official 'outposts' or designated Alliance colonies, like Benning or Joab – still functioned.

In 2186 Earth's lovers transmitted each other 2 billion Valentines on 14th. February, versus five billion for the colonies; in 2187 no-one was keeping count, there was no extranet at all. By 2188 the net was stirring to life, still at less than one percent of former levels – but something like 500,000 Valentines were exchanged on military and industrial bandwidth. It should have been many more but exchanging love tokens was low on people's priorities, or perhaps an apocryphal Christian saint wasn't respected so much, post-Reapers; so many believers had stopped believing.

Gasifications of Jerusalem and _qiblah_ (but not Medina) had respectively discouraged followers of Judaism and Islam; but for devout Muslims to leave Earth for colonies had never been common – on a strict Shari'a construction, obligatory religious duties such as Ramadan could not be performed, _ibadah_ compromises aside. Parallel issues afflicted ultra-orthodox Jews.

Protestant Christians, Buddhists, Hindus etc. tended to be much more flexible in their religious adherence. Still, the number of Valentines transmitted from remote colonies was in the low tens… but it should have been zero, QEC bandwidth was too precious. Maybe a significant fraction of the sixteen billion colonists survived?

Time would tell.

 _Veritas_

Diplomacy seemed like a game of who can hold both their liquor and their tongues.

No-one had explicitly made the connection, but Shepard found himself wishing (a little under the influence of alcohol) that the galactic hero had been turian, or asari, or salarian, or krogan, _anyone_ but human, so long as the poisoned chalice of the Citadel and the Reapers' undivided attention passed to some other planet.

He was only granted time to be maudlin, however, by the ceremony being dominated by the presence of major world leaders, rendering the presence of military brass – and even the irruption of Javik in the middle of the party – quite anticlimactic.

For the little Shepard family this was a positive development; the events of _North Cape's_ maiden voyage had shown how dangerously exposed they were in a recovering world, eager for news and fixated on celebrity. They watched Mikhailovich schmooze with the UNAS movers, shakers, and policy wonks, "Rasa" occasionally whispering in his ear.

Finally the Shepards, with Eva, returned quietly to _North Cape_ , kissing other friends and family good-bye. Their return to Sol system was notable primarily for the pilot and co-pilot bickering like an old married couple – whereupon Hannigan had a finger-wagging word with Eva.

Thereafter, the AI's mobile took to attending evening _souper_ at the commissary, dressed up, at the center of earnest post-mortems on projects of the day.

As Eva grew more comfortable with her crew's distinctively Russian peccadilloes, her crew gradually took a proprietary pride in their ship's AI spirit, who when she took corporeal form was a beautiful _rusalka_ of rustling sea-green arachnid silks.

Once _North Cape_ returned quietly to the Citadel, Czernykh assumed command ( _"I relieve you, sir"/"I stand relieved"_ ).

Garrus and Liara took Tevos, Valern, and Sparatus on a flight down the N-chain.

Shepard took Kelly and Felicia to Russell; Chakwas' and Michel's school; and an island of perpetual summer.

So passed the next eight months.

* * *

 _Next chapter: #90, "Notices"_

* * *

Monday, August 17, 2015


	7. Notices

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 90 **Notices**

* * *

 _A_ _Summer Place_

Chakwas secured the comm and turned back to buttering the scones. The late afternoon sun was turning the beach sand a coppery orange, set against deep sea blue. It being a weekend, Shepard _and_ Chambers were home, so an impromptu picnic was laid on tablecloth over a stump Shepard had ground flat, in lawn just up from the shoreline.

Chambers was overseeing Felicia crawling around on the grass, burbling at a (horrendously expensive) buzzy bee toy; it hadn't occurred to her to pull it on a string yet. Of course, baby couldn't toddle unaided on the uneven ground. Her mother was singing, softly, a kindergarten song; _the big ship sailed down the alley, alley, o_.

Indeed, the only vessel in the marked channel wasn't one of the usual sailing Laser-class yachts; rather, a huge skirted ground-effect craft with construction materials lining the gunwales, Russell-bound, probably from New Devonport.

Shepard was doing pull-ups at a bar fixed between the macrocarpas, the idiot. It was too soon after the biotic amplifier, but you couldn't tell him. He listened to his bones.

Chakwas had already brought out cups and saucers, and now took out a tray with tea and coffee to the sawn-off stump Shepard had ground down to serve as a picnic table. There were shortbread biscuits there already.

"Kelly, I just had mail from Oriana…"

" _Ah-ah,_ " said Kelly, as Felicia grabbed the lip of the stump and levered herself to her little flat feet, then reached for the shortbread. The culprit looked over at her, issued a grade-two sweet smile, and crawled away.

"What is she, psychic? How did she know the biscuits were up there?"

Kelly turned to face Chakwas. Behind her, Felicia peeped backward, cackled, and began crawling back to the table. Shepard finished his count of a hundred and twenty pull-ups, dropped to the ground, and staggered over to the sea strand, then began jogging in place.

"She's been watching _you_. You're a creature of habits, Karin," – true, actually: _Getting old and predictable, I am._ "… and one of those is afternoon tea at the stump."

A loud _splash_ punctuated the conversation as Shepard dove into the shallow water, boxing trunks and tee still on.

"Well, that's as good a way to cool off as any. Where was I. Oh yes…"

"It's his recall, isn't it?"

"Er, maybe. Oriana's left messages for you both. VIP visit to the Institute, _and_ we're about to have company. "

"A visit from the brass? We'd better get Shepard out of the water."

"They want to see _you_ too. The UNAS Veep tracked down Felicia Hannigan."

" _Me?_ On a _Sunday?_ How?"

"She called Hannah."

"I thought as far as anyone knows I'm just a nurse?"

"Delete the word 'just.' Er, your daughter's nibbling a shortbread."

 _More_ _than total Recall_

John had been expecting recall about now. He absorbed the news, shrugged, and headed inside with Chakwas for some dry clothes.

"What's this message from Ori?"

Chakwas had been wondering how to approach this. "You recall she finished her internship with Westerlund, about three months ago?"

"I do. Big party on the Citadel. She went off to cover the N-chain on _Overlord_."

"About two months before _that_ she got in touch with Chloe Michel at Huerta Hospital. Chloe got in touch with me for reasons that will be clear. Our dear Oriana Lawson is a little bit pregnant, and is coming back down the N-chain on _Pegasus_. Miranda will follow in Overlord next week, by the way."

"Oho. I knew she'd do anything for Miri. Has anyone told Mister Prangley?"

"She didn't dare, and wondered if I could advise, or even get in touch on her behalf."

"She couldn't confide in him herself?"

"There's the rub. She couldn't actually be sure it was him – it might have been any of several others. Our glamorous newscaster has been seen at A-list parties on four or five very masculine arms."

"Yeah. I saw the vids. My bet is on Prangley. Miranda is picky."

"You'd lose. I wasn't going to wake him from cold sleep, or Miranda for that matter, without confirmation. Dr Michel organized a passive amniocentesis –"

"A what?"

"She grabbed hold of a few of the embryo's cells, and sequenced the genome."

"Oh. Okay."

"She wasn't prepared to tell anyone but Oriana of the results, but Ori got back to me and said it wasn't Prangley's kid. About the only other thing I got out of her was that the gene scan was clean."

"Yeah. Miranda would have insisted on that, in any partner. Talk to Liara. I bet that made Prangley very relieved."

"I will. Just as well, he and Rodriguez are an item now. Won't Miranda be upset?"

"She could be a little miffed Ori's not having Prangley's kid, but provided the scan is clean I don't think Miranda Lawson cares one red credit chit. Why is Oriana bugging _you_ now, though, if it's not Prangley?"

"I delivered Felicia, and Stella for Jacob and Brynn. She wants to have the baby in Russell, with me and Chloe in attendance. Then she'll take it back to _Overlord_."

"Fine. She can afford it. Is that a problem? She can stay here, with us."

"That was her other request. And the baby's due in two weeks."

 _Promotional Activities_

This was not the cloud of spray of a surface-effect craft approaching, but the white mustache of an all-weather surface boat. Shepard stood on the jetty, shading his gaze with his hand, till the little figures resolved into the postal courier and two others –

 _God, that's_ Hackett… _And_ _Mom_.

It only took forty seconds for the post to drop off his package cargo and passengers.

"You're pretty slick jumping off the boat, Mom."

"Thirty-five years ago I had a lot of practice, son. And Chloe's been on my case about getting in shape."

"Good!"

"That's not the word I'd use."

"This your little craft, Shepard?"- asked Hackett. They turned to the other boat at the jetty, not the yacht, the mean green machine.

"Yep. Kelly hates it when I go fast, but it gets us places quick. Unless the weather's bad or she's doing serious shopping, then she orders a shuttle."

"Very wise. Oooh, tea and crumpets, how civilized. You've heard the news about the Veep?"

"All I know is she's supposed to be turning up at the Lazarus Institute with a dozen bratty would-be students, and it's not _just_ some election stunt. What dragged you from Arcturus, sir? Who's in charge there?"

"Mikhailovich, kicking butt and taking names."

"Boy oh boy."

"Corruption in the construction contracts. He thinks I'm too soft. I've given him a week to prove it, which nicely brackets the Veep's visit."

"He will, you know."

"Quite right. I prefer not to be around to see just how. I do know he has appointed Lieutenant Eva Coré as his _aide de camp_. John, is Kelly about?"

At that moment the lady in question stepped out on the porch.

"Ah. Lieutenant Hannigan. Here are your new rank clips."

"Oh-oh. I've been promoted? This can't be good."

"The UNAS Vice-president wants to meet that lovely Alliance nurse she had to dig out of a deep hole last year. It would not be seemly for you to remain an ensign."

"Oh God."

"Relax, the Veep has worked out who you are. Just a flying visit, literally. She'll be here by UNAS shuttle Marine Two in fifteen minutes. Get in uniform, love."

 _Testaments_

Marine Two was bigger than the usual Kodiak, and looked quite heavily armed.

The pilot kept the mass effect core idling while a double squad of businesslike marines dispersed to the far corners of the tiny islet in pairs. One of each pair pivoted so they stood back to back; each pair standing watch had one looking out to sea, the other watching their principal – the Veep.

That worthy, still smiling with her perfect teeth, approached Kelly, now faintly alarmed, but John squeezed her fingers and _he_ didn't seem worried. Alert, but unconcerned. She felt him sizing up the closest marine, but this was entirely normal.

Hannah also sat at the stump, finishing off a scone and licking her fingers, which Kelly recognized as don't-mind-me-I'm-sure. Hackett had taken refuge in the house, and lights had come on. She could hear the clatter of dishes and a coffee perk fizzing.

The Veep ignored all this and reached to shake Kelly's hand, which seemed to alarm Hannah a little but there didn't seem to be any good reason for that. Store datum for future consideration.

"Good evening, Ms Chambers. Lieutenant Kelly, it is now, I see? I find you well?"

"Yes, ma'am. Might I offer you some tea? Or perhaps coffee? It is not as good as the bubbly you served under the mountain, but it suits the evening."

"So long as it is hot, that is perfectly acceptable, thank you."

Kelly passed over a steaming cup. "How is the President, by the way?"

There was still a slanting pink light, but the sun was near the horizon (Locals were unaccustomed to the slight nip in the evening air, but to a Canadian this was nothing).

"The President is fading fast, my dear. The news reports are accurate in that regard. I would not mislead the nation at this time. But he sends his warmest regards."

The Veep looked around as she sipped, and nodded thoughtfully.

"Another island."

John spoke up here. "This one is mine, madam Vice-President."

"Oh, I do realize. And quite beautifully situated, Captain Shepard. I am truly in awe, and even a little jealous."

"We might be able to set one aside for you, ma'am. Titles are cheap right now."

The VP laughed. "Thank you. I must confess, I was shocked speechless to discover that _none_ of my intelligence agencies could really pin down the nature of your relationship with the Lieutenant here, even after that fantastic documentary on the maiden cruise of _North Cape_. In the end I had to ask Admiral Shepard here."

"Well… I haven't watched it through, ma'am. I do think that cruise was happier, but stranger, than the vid made it out to be."

"Is that possible? I hope I hear some more of those stories one day. Meanwhile, I have a present or two for the Lieutenant here," the Vice-President set her shoulder bag down on the cloth-covered stump, "… which I should not delay in passing over."

She then extracted envelopes and a small heavy parcel.

"You should open the envelopes first, Kelly."

These had honest to god vice-presidential wax seals over the flap. Kelly took her service knife and carefully slit the fold of the first preserving the seal, which she felt she should keep for Felicia later in life.

"It's… a set of declarations. Death certificates. And probate. For my parents."

"Yes, dear. Depressing, I fear."

"I've had some time to get used to it, ma'am. I tried to say goodbye last year."

The VP and Hannah exchanged glances. _So, she's heard that story._ _Well_. Then she passed over the second envelope. "This is a certified copy of the Torrens-style registry title for your St Lawrence island, Kelly. And a hologram."

On breaking the seal, Kelly gave the registry description a cursory glance, then instantly focused on the still image leaping out of the digital ink: "It's been painted!"

"Did we get the colors right?"

"Yes, but… this must have cost a bomb, ma'am!"

"I think of it as an investment in our nation's future, Lieutenant. Also, I've installed a rent-paying Army captain of engineers there till you're ready. Silliness with fake IDs to one side, you really are a UNAS citizen, and so therefore is your child, by the usual rules for children of military personnel born overseas."

Kelly knew a hint when she heard one: "Would you like to meet Felicia, ma'am?"

"The real one? I thought you would never ask. Lead on, Lieutenant."

Much later, Shepard took a coffee urn out to some very appreciative and cold Marine guards.

It had been rather more than a flying visit.

* * *

 _Next chapter: #91, "Intruder tactics"_

* * *

Tuesday, August 18, 2015


	8. Intruder tactics

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 91 **Intruder tactics**

* * *

 _Ecclesia non novit sanguinem._

They came in the dead of night, just after the warder had herself despatched two recalcitrant prisoners to solitary. She opened the entrance to processing to see an Alliance officer and a Russian infantry three-star general sitting at the processing desk, an equivalent turian general standing by.

Enraged, she advanced through the bulkhead door, demanding: "Who are you?"

"Ashley Williams, Commander AN and Council Spectre," said the Alliance officer, a woman. She stood and calmly enquired, "You are the warden?" The infantryman stood also, looking very tired, and began in Russian: _"Brigadier–."_ But Natalya gave the general no time to continue, commanding her enlisted goons:

"Eject them!"

They moved forward half a metre, hands to holstered pistols. Simultaneously, and so fast the movement could barely be followed, the turian and the Alliance woman – a full commander – drew sidearms and lined them up.

The warden, suddenly staring down the barrel of an N7 Eagle, felt time slow. She could see the woman's trigger finger knuckle go white, and knew herself close to death. At that moment a deep voice behind her said _"Halt."_

The whole tableau froze. Very deliberately, the warder turned to find a platoon of Alliance marines, assault rifles at port arms, filing through behind… a full Admiral, Mikhailovich– and _Brooks_ _!_

One of her goons stammered, "But Admiral… what have we done?"

Mikhailovich examined him critically. "What rank are you?"

"Senior sergeant… sir."

"You were drawing a weapon on those officers."

"Yes sir, but the _combrig_ –"

"What rank are the officers before you?"

Belated recognition dawned in the eyes of the smarter goon. He closed them, face twisting in agony, undid his holster buckle and let the weapon fall to the floor, then placed his hands behind his head before reverting to as stoic an expression as he could manage. His comrade, eyes narrow slits, followed his example. Mikhailovich gave them a steely look and glanced at Brooks, who spoke low:

" _First one, good at thinking. No malicious intent. Second one, will do any evil by lawful command, and has done. Conceives it to be his duty, but really pure fear."_

The Admiral turned to the platoon's captain, nodded. The captain ordered: "Corporal. Take two men. Secure and disarm the guards, remove this one to the holding brig."

The first goon was led away. The second stayed, kneeling with an assault rifle prodding his back. The Admiral's attention turned to the _combrig_.

"Natalya. I regret that I cannot ignore the infraction just witnessed by myself, Spectre Williams, and General Vakarian. You were to be stood down on full pay pending a formal hearing into certain irregularities which came to our attention, particularly the so-called "escape" of the late Grigory Kvinitadze."

"Late." The warden's features slumped, but she maintained her erect posture.

"Very. Given the developing situation, the essential portion of the hearing will take place at once. You are relieved of command. General Bulanov?"

The Russian infantry officer cleared his throat and delivered the formal statement:

"I relieve you."

The warder glared at Mikhailovich and demanded: "What charges?"

"Theft. Treasonable collaboration with enemies of the State. Betrayal and murder of agents of the Alliance. Captain, the warder is to be confined to her office, manacled at parade rest pending our arrival in approximately five minutes."

"Sir. Sergeant…"

Six minutes later, Brooks entered the office, with Mikhailovich.

"So, Pyotr–"

"Shut up." The Admiral sat at _her_ desk, in _her_ chair. For this he would surely pay… except that he was supposed to have paid for earlier crimes already. He had produced some sort of notebook. Not a datapad. Passed it to Brooks, and sat back:

"Do you have anything to say to me?" The warder frowned, but said nothing.

"You killed Medvedev."

"I did not. A terrible accident, cleaning his gun." Brooks made a note.

"And Platov. He went to the Yahg. "

"No." Another note.

"Wilkinson."

"No! What? His suit ruptured!" Yet another.

And so it went, for nearly three minutes. At the end, Mikhailovich retrieved the paper list, and examined Brooks' notes:

"Hm. Every response a lie, but Wilkinson. Very well. Brooks, inform his widow."

"Sir."

The warder stared. "You can't convict me on uncorroborated testimony by this filth."

Brooks' eyebrows raised. Mikhailovich grimaced: "Not uncorroborated." Then he produced an omnitool interface, and sound flowed. Her own voice:

" _See to it that damnable Salarian quack gets Yagod to Kvinitadze at once. There is a shuttle at Luna City and the controller has been prevailed upon not to notice it."_

The warder felt the world go grey, and she sat on the floor.

"So, Pyotr. Who bugged my office? Who did this to me?"

"You did it to yourself, Natalya." The warder snorted.

"Well. You will turn me into a grey turnip? What an irony. Where's Haleuse?"

"No. That Salarian has been taken in custody by one of Spectre Williams' colleagues, one Jondum Bau, on the authority of Valern. I understand there will be consequences for his family's germ line should he fail to collaborate wholeheartedly."

"You will lose your willing helpers."

"Perhaps. Another Salarian, Doctor Maelon, seems to think he has better ideas. Shepard recommended him."

"I see. You still trust the Salarians."

"No you don't, and I don't. But it does comes down to who one can trust. You have lost mine. And there's no obvious use for you."

"Hm. What dungeon will you throw me in now?"

"Not a dungeon, Natalya. It is tastefully decorated with Parnack forest motifs."

The warder screamed, struggled against her manacles, and was manhandled out the door. Goon number two entered, with sidearm restored.

"Ah, Vladimir. Escort the prisoner to the log cell. I believe the yahg has for some time wished to discuss this person's insults. In the interests of cross-species harmony, we will oblige. Advise the yahg that violence is _strictly_ forbidden."

The guard looked nervous. Brooks noted the piggy eyes shifting left and right.

"Should anything untoward happen, sir, will I be held responsible?"

"Do not worry, Vladimir. You will all be despatched to a remote planet and marooned with primitive asari who would _love_ to make your acquaintance."

"Will I want to make theirs, sir?"

"Briefly, Vladimir. Well spotted. Your case is borderline. A wife and children, hm. Take my advice, and hide. You may starve. Let us see if your appetites still rule your brain. Take this–" (The admiral picked a medal from the contraband tray) "– and Spectre Williams will be back for you and the yahg in a week, with the _Normandy_."

…

As it turned out, Ashley only had to pick up a thinner "Vladimir."

* * *

 _Great balls of fire_

It was at Rio that Shepard found one reason for his recall, when Ashley was being dropped off a bit late at the N7 command school _("Ash!")_ just as he underwent out-processing _("Shepard!")_ for renewal of his N7 status.

"Sorry I'm late. Had to pick up someone. What are _you_ here for?"

"Just got run through a day's tech updates, renewed the ship master's warrant, pilot's warrant, and had the new implants checked out."

"So you're back up to speed?"

"I've been told to lay off any heavy biotic drain for a month. Things are still bedding in. What about _you?_ I thought you'd sworn off trying for N7?"

"I got tired of Vega's emailed insults. "Grow a pair of _cojones_ ," Kee-rist."

Shepard had to laugh at that. "Didn't you and he have a thing going?"

"Yeah, nah. Well, maybe. We met a… Look, I _have_ outgrown waiting for Mr Right, with what's happened in the last three years Mr Right's been husked or vaporized anyway."

They were sharing Shepard's milkshake in the blessed cool of the commissary, gazing out at the huge mechs creating flat platforms out of the rubble, on which future buildings would rise, and planting saplings along newly terraced rubble walls.

"How many people are here now?" asked Shepard.

Ash meditatively took another sip from her straw.

"About a hundred and fifty thousand, EDI tells me, in the greater Rio area. Dropped nearly three orders of magnitude. Man this is nice, it was _hot_ out there."

Rio _was_ burning hot, which Shepard felt was a nice change, but the dust of platform construction draped everything above ground in a fine haze. He'd be out of it soon.

"Don't get too comfortable. You've got two days of heat training, before they get you back onto the N7 _cursus_. Where are you up to, there, by the way?"

"N-5 and 6."

"That'll take _months_."

"Just three. I've apparently already satisfied the N-7 hurdle."

Shepard nodded slowly. That meant she'd been in a certain kind of combat. Best to approach that indirectly. He brought the subject back to 'family'.

"Any word on Sarah?"

Ash looked even more uncomfortable now.

"She surfaced two months ago."

" _Ash_."

"Okay, look – she'd lost her mind in the Reaper assault on the refugee docks but made it out to the wards in the company of Salarians with security mechs."

"Christ, I'm sorry –"

"Could have been worse. She rang a bell on Bailey's security system one day when she wandered past a DNA sensor. She's in Huerta now. I visited her every week."

"I'll look in on her."

"Would you? She breaks my heart, Shepard. Telling her I had to go to the ICA school was so _hard_."

"I'll take Kelly. We'll see what we can do…" This got him a slightly teary hug. "And I'll organize for Vega to come back."

"Don't bother. Vega's already _got_ an asari girlfriend. She's, like, a bit over forty."

"Huh. Cradle robber Vega. Hm."

"Not really, she's out of school. Vega was just my toy boy anyway."

"I _see_."

"Do you? I'm an Alliance career officer with a subcutaneous contraceptive, Shep. Boys and babies aren't my thing. If Vega wants to hang around, maybe… later."

"You're a Spectre and a full commander, Ash. I think you've done enough."

"I'm going to wipe out what happened to grandpa. _N_ _othing_ better get in my way. I swear I'm going to make N7, then flag rank before I'm forty. "

"Ash! I get it!"

She gave him a withering stare. "Do you? _You're_ N7. Vega's N7. For heaven's sake, _Riley's_ N7 and she's an engineer! _I'm_ going to be N7 if it kills me."

"Okay… Now that's an attitude they like to see. I have to tell you, Ash, I'd never have expected it of you. What changed?"

Ashley seemed to have some difficulty composing herself.

"Have you heard about some of the crap that's been going down on the chain heads, last six months or so?"

"Just what Oriana or Allers tell me is behind the news. You had a bad mission?"

"… I suppose EDI will tell you all about it, anyway. You know you're going to be the relief commander for _Normandy_ , right?"

"No. I've only just finished out-processing."

"I bet you'll get bonged with your orders before the end of the day."

 _Night fighter_

There had been several different chains of relays out from Earth.

Other civilizations concentrated on their own, like the Palaven (P) chain, Sur'Kesh (K) chain, and Thessia (T) chain. To Earth and the Alliance, the Arcturus or Exodus (X) and Nest (N) chains took the lion's share of resources.

The X chain was of prime economic importance. It began at Arcturus station, currently heading out from the old Arcturus mass relay, cannibalized for its eezo.

After getting on for two years it _still_ was only half way to the Exodus cluster.

However, a couple of dreadnoughts converted to mobile docks (with carrier escorts) were also probing to some of the old colonies near the chain. The plan was to reach an old Reaper relay and cannibalize _that_. Meanwhile, those links off to the side had made contact with several of the closer colonies.

"You heard about Shanxi, right? A month ago. It's closer than the Aethon sector."

"Only Khalisah's newscast. You joyously re-linked them and erased some of your grandpa's reputation."

"Hell yeah. _'Earth's interstellar civilization has been reborn,'_ according to Allers, but Al-Jilani beat her for energy. There's a news blackout on what happened next."

"What?"

Ashley looked around to see no-one was listening.

"We ran into the first pirates."

By now, Earth to Arcturus was no longer the only option for freight and supplies. The Earth _could_ provide Arcturus station with food and raw materials, since the conduit relays were able to divide space much more finely than the old huge relays, but the more old colonies and mining stations could be linked home, the better.

Six weeks back, after delivering the first courier packages and Alliance reps to Shanxi, _Peacemaker_ and _Normandy_ had been called to the head of the X-chain.

"An Alliance shuttle had been heading along the new X-18-E Euler side branch to Benning. It was the Arcturus Station's primary resource center, remember?"

"Sure. Makes sense to contact the productive colonies first."

"Anyway, it was pinged and chased by some pirate's armed merchant cruiser. The shuttle's sensors weren't good enough to give any further details, and the shuttle ran like hell back to the relay."

"Very sensible. Turning it off as they went through, I hope?"

"Oh yeah, the warfighting manual is very explicit on that point."

The QEC link to that relay was still live by the time _Normandy_ and _Peacemaker_ got there, which meant that it was not destroyed and had probably not been found.

"Of course not. It's tiny. If it's powered down, you'd have to know where to look."

"I'll take your word for it. Anyway, Garrus took _Peacemaker_ through X-18-E-2 first, stealthed, and reported that aside from a big angry leaky old cruiser on the far side of the system, passive sensors found nothing. But radio chatter indicated that a major attack was in progress on Benning."

"Benning had a highly organized militia – the so-called 'Arcturus First Division' –"

"Yeah, the pirates lost half their strength trying to raid, but they were denying space access to Benning and dropping the occasional rock."

"Okay. So _Normandy_ proceeded through also? Flight of the Intruder, no less."

"Yup, following ' _Shepard's Fighting Frigate Manual_ '. I pinged the system with the Argus array while _Peacemaker_ stayed quiet."

"They really call it that? It was just some notes I left with Hackett before Cronos."

"Hell, Shepard, that's the _official_ name, us spacer types call it the Blue Gospel, after the color of the digital ink Hackett issued. And your Mom has written footnotes!"

"Man, I'm going to have to get a copy for Kelly to put on the shelf."

"Anyway, it worked, we caught the pirates by surprise. The scan lit up the cruiser in some detail, confirming it as an ex-Cerberus unit, but it also showed _nearly three dozen_ smaller craft –"

"Target rich environment. Night intruder, forsooth."

"… including five frigates."

"Oh. Not so good."

"Tell me about it. Two of those spotted that they had been pinged, and warned the rest. Garrus opened his loading bay door and fired a round in anger from _Peacemaker's_ FTL missile revolver."

"Heard about that toy. Just like Garrus. Was that the first time?"

"Yep. Test firings showed these were really only good against stationary, or constant bearing targets."

"Collision course targets."

"Bingo. But although the cruiser began to power up, it was very sluggish, and forty seconds later – extreme range for Garrus – it flashed into a plasma fireball. Took out two yachts twelve kilometers off."

"Good!"

"Maybe. The reaction of the pirates was like a hornet's nest had been kicked."

 _Per_ Donnelly's idea, as elaborated by Tali and Garrus, _Normandy_ _'s_ shuttle (with Gabby aboard), led them across the system.

"The idea was she'd go just fast enough not to discourage pursuit."

"I _did_ put that in my updated notes. It started life as a Tali notion. She was drunk."

"No kidding? What do I say when _I'm_ drunk? Don't answer that. So anyway Gabby _just_ made it, one of the frigates turned out to be properly maintained with better speed. Next time that happens I'm going to be shadowing her in stealth mode. I still have nightmares about that, Shepard."

"Don't. You were thinking like an N7."

"My my, compliments. So, she passed through the conduit relay, after disabling the IFF so any vessel could transit. Once through, Gabby sent a command to relay A-18-E-1 so it was directed down towards the cold, frozen rogue planet it was mounted on."

"Ah yes. Donnelly has an evil mind."

"I can't help wondering what Staff College thinks of him."

"If they haven't expelled him by now they've spotted the asset."

Ashley and Cortez had watched in awe from the cockpit as one at a time, at intervals of about forty seconds, nearly all the frigates and most of the tiny yachts and shuttles flew straight into the ground, till panicky calls from the last frigate halted the stream.

"Gabby says if she could hear the screams of his buddy, the last frigate could too."

 _Peacemaker's_ recordings established that the last frigate was in tight-beam contact with one that had about four seconds before it bit the dusty ice. There remained only a handful of small craft and that single frigate.

"Garrus invited them to surrender."

"They didn't, right?"

"Got it in one."

"Thanix or javelins?"

"Your manual says _No unnecessary risks_. Nuke in the middle of the group, only ten klicks off the frigate. They were all clustered around the relay, which was on a planet with a magnetic field, so the EMP did for them all. The yachts surrendered. Frigate was so fried we had to send a shuttle to communicate at all."

"God. Did you make contact with Benning?"

"Oh yes. After we fixed the blown circuits on the bloody relay. Benning wanted to lynch the survivors. Shepard, did I do the right thing?"

"Why do you ask? Garrus was there too."

" _I_ was the one who sent Gabby out as bait. And the pirates had their families on board. By what the survivors said, I killed eighteen hundred and twenty-three people of which half were non-combatant. Not counting _four thousand_ killed on Benning."

"They made their choice."

"Their kids didn't."

"Did you know there were kids there?"

"Neither Garrus nor I had the faintest idea. Garrus called it unreasonably dumb."

"So next time, we know there may be innocents. We lock them in the system and return a week later with a four-frigate _battle group_."

"And if they disperse down to a planet?"

"We send minifreighters with a couple of divisions of ground troops, the Russian way. If they _still_ don't surrender, well you tried. And sending Gabby as bait is, I think, why you were sent the N7 invite."

"… Okay."

"Hackett doesn't ask us to be barbarians, Ash. If you know you can find a way to avoid a bloodbath, do. Try to make sure there's time to bring up the heavy mob. That's what the relay tactics are for. You feel better?"

Ashley was silent for a minute.

"I just wish I'd known."

"N7's aren't God, Ash. You can't predict everything."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #92, "What rough beast"_

* * *

Thursday, August 20, 2015


	9. What rough beast

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 92 **What rough beast**

* * *

 _Gooseberry Summer_

Oriana arrived on the island two days after Shepard's recall and Hackett's departure back to Arcturus Station.

Hannah had been picking some ripe Cape and Chinese Gooseberries from ground-hugging abandoned vines on the neighboring headland when the shuttle arrived. She jumped smartly back in the green cigarette boat, but was a bit late nonetheless, pulling up to the jetty just after Kelly sauntered down from the house.

She could see that Oriana, shading her eyes, was assisted from the _Pegasus'_ shuttle by an asari commando. For a moment Hannah feared it would take off before she got there, but the shuttle disgorged another asari, a man, and a turian, bearing baggage behind the chattering women as they slowly returned to the house, a hugely swollen Oriana being supported by Kelly. Last of all, that damnable scandalous camera discreetly following the porters. Hannah jumped in the idling shuttle, and checked the cockpit.

"Aha! Why aren't you going inside too, Liara?"

"There are going to be questions about parentage and as Shadow Broker I want to be able to say I was _not_ around at the time. _Oooh_ , can I have a kiwi?"

"Thought so. Take the basket, I can get more. Give my regards to Lemaes."

"Will do. Here's my crew back, Hannah, hop off. Unless you want a rapid transit down the N-chain again?"

"Not just yet, woman, questions would be asked by the Council."

"But wouldn't that be _so_ entertaining?"

"Get thee behind me. I recognized Bellerophon, but who was the lieutenant being Oriana's porter?"

"Ah. _He's_ right behind you. Admiral Hannah Shepard, meet Perseus."

An awestruck Admiral Shepard automatically took the AI's hand. "Ye gods and little fishes, you're almost as perfect an android as Eva was a gynoid. If you're here, where's _Pegasus?_ "

"In low orbit, ma'am, coming up over the horizon, so we have to get moving."

"Oh. I'll get out of your way."

"To answer the question, Admiral, I still have high-bandwidth UV laser link from the shuttle, besides the QEC link. I might as well be there still for all the effect this distance has."

"Useful. I must remember. Goodbye and good luck."

* * *

 _Danse macabre_

A low chuckle could be heard on arrival back at the Hermitage bunker, actually situated some dozens of metres under the Neva.

"Admiral?"

"Nothing, Rasa Lila. One more death avoided."

 _Ah yes._ She could appreciate that sentiment, indeed. "I guess."

Mikhailovich looked up as Pavel took his overcoat: "You don't seem too sure." Rasa/Brooks collapsed in an armchair, observing:

" _Someone_ died." Watching the writhing woman being frog-marched off had been just one more incrementally burdensome scene. Somehow more intrusive now.

"A short time later, yes," confirmed Mikhailovich. "Contrary to my express instructions too _(*chuckle*)_ ," and Rasa smiled briefly. "The yahg will have to be disciplined, of course."

"But they don't take discipline well. Not from those who _seem_ weak."

"Truly. There is such a thing as a sin of the people, Rasa. And as a people, the yahg will pay. Such a restless, relentless, hungry aggression will doom them, I think. Perhaps _this_ yahg will survive being put to the proof. But I really don't think so."

"Mm. I'm sure the Salarians are considering what to do about them as we speak."

"They might try to make use of them, perhaps. But, sooner or later every such species runs into a predator they mistake for prey." Rasa sighed. Mikhailovich considered her carefully. "All this bothers you?"

"Oh, I'm sure Durga Kali plucked at her with open arms, all of them. So, not as such. But Shepard might have shown a little kindness. What he could spare–"

"Rasa, Anderson would not have spared her. Not during an emergency, at least."

"I'm fairly sure Shepard would not have allowed her to be eaten."

The Admiral grunted. "Perhaps not," he conceded. Reflexively, he glanced around; _only Pavel and Rasa present_. "At least, not in front of Chambers. Inconvenient woman."

" _Mine_ would have. But her Shep? An instantaneous bullet to the brain first, I think."

"Rasa, Natalya's end was in fact fairly quick. The multiple ghosts of her victims would call it condign punishment. From my perspective, hushed tales of her demise will put her kind on notice. She should serve _some_ purpose, even if just as an example."

"Yeah." Rasa turned on her side. "Need some shuteye. Getting old," she muttered.

"You think _you've_ got problems. Did Chambers get to you?"

Eyes opened to a featureless ceiling. "Yes, that hurt. More than you can imagine."

"Why? If it helps, I can imagine a lot. The population suffered greatly."

"Collectively, yes. Pyotr, these are _my_ demons. I'll deal with them."

"Good."

"Even your Maria. Sheesh, was _I_ ever that young? It's just, when it comes down to individuals…"

"If you spend any length of time in Russia, my dear, you will realize individuals are powerless in the face of the collective. For the rest, I have never met anyone who understood Russians, especially Russian women."

"Oh, I don't know. No one likes to speculate about the Russian soul more than the Russians. Don't kid yourselves. That's a _human_ thing."

"But in Russia it takes a particular form. How did Dostoyevsky put it, in his writer's journal? _The most fundamental, raw spiritual requirement of Russians is that of suffering, an omnipresent need upwelling in all things._ "

"And I'm supposed to become used to this masochism?"

"Our sense of community derives from shared sentiment, especially pain."

Rasa snorted. "Right. And of course there's been a lot of that, lately."

"Our people suffered again, yes."

"Though not as much as some other places."

"We had twenty thousand ready-use nuclear weapons. The Reapers went after a lot of those and melted metal over most of the bases, but we used _all_ our exospheric ABM warheads. That slowed them so badly, they didn't get the mobile units at all. We couldn't get a lock on them with missiles but there were other ways. We actually had a stabilized front, and every time they tried a blitzkrieg advance behind our lines–"

"You nuked them green… I heard. You're telling me how the _Reapers_ suffered?"

"You misunderstand. In much of Siberia and Central Asia the taiga now glows red as the plants take up the radionuclides. That's also true of many cities, but not Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Reapers thought of those as administrative centres, _ahaha_."

"Oh." Rasa saw the butler/batman, Pavel, having finished his duties, sit down.

"We've taken back the indoctrinated towns. We moved the indoctrinated out, and our veterans in, after the Red Flash. But it is still hard to feed the people."

"All that glowing countryside?"

"Agriculture hit rock bottom. Previous experience with that was not so extreme. Plenty of good Russians are ready to slit each others throats. I won't permit it."

"Is that why places like Baba Yaga's cabin exist?"

"Heavens no. Misbehaviour just gets you sent to Australasia."

"How did you manage that? Bear in mind I've been out of circulation a while."

"We did a three-way deal with Coats and the Europeans. The UK got access rights to a nascent European trade federation."

"So the cabin is for…"

"Traitors and the high-level indoctrinated. We see eye to eye with the Primarch on this matter. _Low_ status indoctrinated get locked into the radioactive towns and fields. It's astonishing, but some of them survive."

Rasa nodded. "You're not worried that deal will come back to haunt you?"

"Why should I? Plenty of Russians emigrated to the US and Europe in past ages."

"What did the Europeans get out of this?"

"Help with infrastructure. Electricity, for the first year. The Finns got part of Karelia back, Japan the Kuriles, Ukrainians the Don basin – they're welcome to it, for now."

"For now."

"The alpha particle and beta count is extreme. We kept the Crimea, even so."

"Oh. So what happens a few decades from now?"

Mikhailovich just grinned. So, and this was unsettling, did Pavel. Rasa felt unutterably weary, but sat up, leaned forward and looked the Admiral in the eye:

"Admiral. Don't you see such a strategy is a mistake, long term?"

"What would you have me do, Rasa?"

"Deal across borders. Colonize space, when that's possible. Keep your alliances."

"How do you suggest we do that?"

"This thing with Australia is good. Do more. Your people need to get about."

"Others rebuffed us. The world is too small a place. We need room."

"You have land borders with the Chinese, Europeans, Indians, assorted Islamic caliphates, all massively outnumbering you–"

"All fighting each other."

"Sooner or later, your neighbors will find common cause. Don't be that cause."

"Come the four corners of the world in arms, and we will rock them. We _fight_ for our sacred borders."

"And you keep expanding them. Like the Tatars before you. That has got to stop. Ensure people don't spit every time they hear the name of Russia."

"Hasn't happened to the anglos, yet."

Rasa let the implicit _One day you will meet each other on a frontier_ hang in the air a moment. Then:

"You are behaving like the Yahg, Pyotr. Sooner or later every such nation runs into a predator they mistake for prey."

* * *

 _HAZard_

This time, when _Normandy_ crew saluted at the entrance, Joker was not among them. Yet. But EDI was.

"Lieutenant EDI, Ship's Navigator."

"Good God. Jana's a magician."

"Do I look different, Shepard?" Smiling. She _knew_ she looked different.

"You look _exactly_ like the Cylon princess of yore. Very appropriate."

Traynor, the only one who got the reference, was immobilized by giggles.

"Will Joker approve?"

"No, he'll try to make a joke of it. Yes, he'll be baking a cake."

"Um…"

"Put it this way. If he doesn't dance a jig I'll have his testosterone level checked."

"…Thank you. I think. Where is Kelly?"

"You're welcome, and Kelly's getting Oriana settled in, we'll be back for her when Miranda wakes up."

"Will our old yeoman be at the board again, sir?" offered Adams, looking hard at a paralytic Traynor.

"Hey!"

"Relax, Samantha, she's a nurse now, remember? CPO Gabriella Daniels, that's a snappy new hat, and a combat badge too. The great Scot will be _so_ jealous."

"Funny thing, sir, I wasn't carrying a weapon when I got that."

"The brass knows a weapon when they see one, Gabby, even if it's a shuttle, and they know courage under fire, too. I don't see you up here much. Where's my XO?"

"Marine Major Riley is supervising the departure of the dock workers from the loading bay, sir. The last shuttle's departure has been delayed."

"So my XO is where an engineer should be, and my engineers are where my XO should be. Let me guess. Riley didn't like their work."

"I did notice some activity flashing off and repainting. Also she insisted one spar weld – of the shuttle davit – be ground down to the heat-affected zone and redone."

"Okey dokey. EDI, tell her I expect her up here ten minutes ago and _no-one_ leaves until both of us have inspected that weld. Cortez, First Lieutenant now. Well done."

"I think it was for procuring Ash an honest to god Christmas tree, sir. Douglas fir, in a bucket."

"She might have said that, Steve, but I know better. Right, I've met all of you before, old friends. Sarah, Bethany, try not to lose those stripes. If you've been bumped up in rank that means there's room at the bottom. Where are the new guys?"

"Er… there's a bunch of Russians recommended by Admiralty, sir. Corporal Natasha Yakovlev guards the war room now, at least that's her duty station, and PFC Alexei Alexeyev – "

"Tali's friend? The guy who 'notices things?'"

"Maksutov, yes, sir, he was the first, he got lonely so he asked to be moved away."

"Wouldn't happen."

"The way I heard it, sir, Tali spoke to Garrus and Garrus spoke to the Primarch and the Primarch spoke to Admiral Pyotr Mikhailovich and all of a sudden we had another eight Russian crew-people. I think he was actually sweet on, er, Tatyana I think it is, and the homesickness was a smokescreen."

"Figures. Ah, I see Riley has deigned to grace us with her presence."

"Sorry, Sir."

"What was so important, Lee?"

"The main support for the shuttle maintenance crane. Didn't want Cortez crushed, sir."

Cortez frowned. "That's been bent ever since the Oculus rift. Never gave any trouble."

"Well no, but of course the dock straightened it, and…"

"It cracked," Shepard nodded.

"Hence the repair, sir, and gusset welds. _Badly_ done. The remediation's only just finished. Magnetic Particle Inspection says its fine."

Shepard sighed. "I'm not going to be able to haul you over the coals for this, am I."

"Sir! Not funny, Sir!"

"All right then. Is that the only fix you had in hand?"

"It's the _last_ one, sir. The mini-crucible went in place of the Hammerhead yesterday."

"Very well. Gentlemen and women, transit stations please."

"So I put the maintenance workers out the door, sir?"

"You may fire them when ready, Riley."

* * *

 _Good for what ails you_

For the fifth time, Miranda was brought from cold sleep with a cold: "Urgh. You'd think a practically perfect immune system would fix this. Hey, it's dark."

Jack was unsympathetic: "I've got the red lights down because that suits a freezer hangover. Humans don't adapt well to cold sleep, Lawson."

"Is Jana back? I need antibiotics, I think."

"Try an overcharged biotic amp, and she got here two days ago. Here, drink this."

"Don't need one. Finesse is everything. What _is_ that?"

"Islay scotch in coffee with cream, cinnamon on top. Drink."

There was a brief sip and then a series of glugs.

"Hallelujah. Wait. How did Jana get here? What day is this? Is N-17 in place?"

"Woke you up, didn't it? T'Soni dropped her off from Pegasus two and a half days ago, and no, the _Kilimanjaro_ is ready for the final placement but Boris says we're not moving off N-16 till Shepard gets here."

"Where _is_ he?"

"He's _coming_ , Lawson, Christ, give the man a break, he got recalled last week."

"So why have I been woken up?"

"Shepard thinks we need to be down on Earth for a bit. Orders cut for _Overlord_ , return home. _You_ and _me_ get to see the Bay and the beaches on the mainland."

"Everyone gets shore leave?"

"Admiral Hannah says she'll thrash your biotic ass at beach volleyball."

"Eek. What brought this on? Does Ori know?"

"She's the cause of all this. Jana says she's about to pop."

"Wait, wait, it's too soon."

"Well, either baby's premature or it's not the guy you thought it was."

"Not Prangley?"

"Oriana had tests, she says No, and just as well, I'd have whupped his ass."

"Never mind. Hallelujah squared and cubed. I'll go see her."

"Cheerleader, haven't you been listening? T'Soni picked her up when Jana came. It's taken two days to thaw you. She's staying with Chambers on the island right now."

Whiskey or not, Miranda jumped straight off the pod tray. " _TRANSIT STATIONS._ Juno, I want this boat back down the chain _yesterday!_ "

* * *

 _Subtle, what's that_

 _O_ _rizaba's_ airlock parted for Shepard and he saluted Rear-Admiral Boris Mikhailovich's honor guard.

"Admiral, I thought you'd still be on _Kilimanjaro_. Isn't there still N-17 to place?"

Both men began proceeding to the QEC conference room, Boris affirming Shepard's guess:

"We're keeping operational security tight on this, Captain, but yes, we're ready for the last relay before the fifty cubic light year search sphere. However, we think there will ideally be one more, N-18, at a rogue giant planet with moons we've spotted about half a day's FTL in."

"So why isn't N-17 done?"

"There's six side relays on N-16 we're still installing. We need to pause. Also, I've had some disturbing data. So disturbing, I'm arming two kilometre-class iron bubbles."

"Nuke or impact bubbles, Admiral?"

"One each, following yours and Hannah's manual, Captain."

They reached the conference room and Mikhailovich engaged the security bubble.

"So. You've got odd interferometric observations of the fluff in the search sphere?"

"Odd isn't the word. They are _strange_ , Captain. That N-18 planet is within striking distance of a gravitational anomaly behind a gas cloud so no direct view. We'll get briefed later."

"Black hole, then. A hidey-hole. Reason enough to prep a mass-energy kinetic."

"Some sort of singularity, yes, but there's no accretion disk radiation."

"That _is_ odd. It must be a supermassive black hole, or it's been around a long time."

"Or both. My feelings exactly. I want your input on this Shepard, and a reconnaissance in force with two frigates minimum."

"I just sent _Overlord_ off for leave!"

"Not a problem, I've relayed my concerns to Hackett and four of the Normandy class will be arriving shortly. How long will _Overlord_ be away?"

"Less than two weeks, now. I'll be following just before we push for N-17."

"That will do fine, Captain."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #93, "A distant thunder"_

* * *

Sunday, August 22, 2015


	10. A distant thunder

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 93 **A distant thunder**

* * *

 _…I'm awake now_

Miranda didn't bother with a shuttle. _O_ _verlord_ arrived at the island with a whoosh and a wallop, causing an asari guard posted at the jetty to shoulder a weapon, till the airlock opened and a black-and-white skinsuited woman leaped on the beach, then sprinted to the house eighty metres off. The commando had been warned something like this might happen.

The frigate's mass effect core levitated her three metres off the shore. A much more composed little troop exited out the loading bay door; they wandered over to chat amiably about boats.

 _Changeling_

"Thank god for air conditioning, is all I can say." Oriana, propped up on the lounge couch, watched the AI mobile calmly preparing coffee. "Randa. Why have you got Juno to dress up as me?"

"She's about the right size, hair coloring, and face shape as us. Juno picked her own mobile from the Cerberus cache, Oriana. I didn't force it. Makeup does the rest."

The AI came over with a tray. "It was my idea, Oriana. If I can look like you, visibly unpregnant, it would sow uncertainty and doubt in the mind of the curious. Has any footage from your camera showing _you_ been released?"

"Not for more than half a year now. I locked _my_ camera's data stream a little while after the _North Cape_ incident. Shepard warned me 'not for news, only for posterity.' "

"I think he meant coverage of Felicia. And Kelly."

"I know. But it was easier to devote my camera to them and lock it. While I was with Westerlund I could use pool cameras, and they were operated by my offsider, to viewers I was just a talking head or a voice, not 'showing' much back then anyway."

"Good. Where _is_ Kelly?"

"On duty in Russell, she gets off in five hours, Hannah's got Felicia. I've been using syndicate cameras for contract work since Westerlund. Remote controlled or I've been supervising Juno doing reporting, when I began bulging. When I was too tired to work in the field at all, I just wrote commentaries."

"Even better. So there's just us here, now, in the house. I've been thinking."

"About what we do next? We have to bring the child up."

"Maybe if we behave like it's mine?" But Oriana swung bleary eyes at her sister:

"Chloe says it's a him. Sis, you want my baby? _Why?_ "

"I just want to give you options with boys. Still your baby. We pretend, is all."

"Danner Gossimah's gone. Or will be gone. Or something. Who else is there?"

 _Fishing_

As evening descended around the little house, and the comparatively vast frigate hovered over the jetty with its tongue out (so to speak), a soft glow appeared in the windows as the house VI sensed the oncoming dark.

Hadley and Toombs had visited briefly and Juno, smiling, gave them what they wanted – saltwater fly-fishing gear. They took the little yacht a couple of hundred metres into the bay. There was a light breeze from sea to land as the heat of the day rose from the soil and the cold air over the water moved to replace it; just enough air for a couple of knots in the little two-man keeler. They dropped sail and hung their lines on either side, baited with textured CHON protein and blood plasma.

"So what gives with the boss? You've known her longer than me."

"She's obviously looking after her pregnant sis. Beyond, that, how should I know?"

Toombs lapsed into a contemplative silence, then: "Do fish bite on this stuff?"

"Don't even know what fish they've got here, let alone if they like artificial meat."  
More deep thoughts from the ex-corporal ensued. Hadley could hear the clockwork.

"She's scheming _something_. And that ban on talking to the media is still in place."

"Well it's embarrassing, Toombs. Christ, this isn't so hard. Career girl gets pregnant, oh dear. Beyond that, don't even bother trying, mate. _You_ couldn't scheme to save your soul."

"So _you_ try then. What's she thinking?"

Hadley sighed. "Well my best guess is it wasn't the Dad they thought it was."

"You mean, Prangley. Rodriguez has a lock on him now."

"That's a switch, news to me. I was visiting Goldstein at Arcturus when this blew up."

"And what were _you_ doing in private?"

"None of your damn business."

"Come on, son, out here no-one can hear us, not even Juno. You saw Rodriguez blow hot and cold on Prangley for a couple of years. Goldstein ever do that do you?"

"No. And we all saw it, till Ori took Prangley away. Bummer for Rodriguez."

"I think someone was teaching her a lesson. Rodriguez wanted Prangley at a distance but she didn't want to lose him. Hadley, what would your military scientists call her position?"

"Failed to take the high ground. Morally, at least. Untenable?"

 _Looking ahead_

 _Kilimanjaro's_ war room held only ship captains, ship AIs, and above, with one exception: Lt. Jeff Moreau. Shepard quickly stepped over to him.

"I won't shake your hand, Flight Lieutenant. Chakwas says you won't have been taking your meds. Why are you here?"

"Awww, crap, Captain. Taking notes. You're not kicking me out, are you?"

"…Maybe not. You've been piloting this dreadnought for months. On reflection, you might be needed. What's going down?"

"We had to make a handful of extra relays for side trips off of N-16. Lots of metal and ³He resources." Helium-three was ship fuel. "Something's bothering the astrophysics boffins about the road ahead. N-17 is the last stopoff for the fleet."

"So I hear."

"N-18's going to be at the North Pole of a whacking great rogue planet the size of Mars, and Boris Mikhailovich calls it a killing ground. Not sure what that's all about but from now on search is by frigate. There's four of you here now, that's two pairs."

"Stealth, huh. Okay. We'll be running two hidden, one scanning till _Overlord_ gets back. _I'm_ not allowed to enter the search bubble till we're at full strength. In fact I'm going back down the chain before we move in force. Let me ask you again, Joker, what prompted you to join this pow-wow?"

"I spoke to EDI on TBS and she's supposed to be here. But I only see top brass."

"Ah. Well she'll be in the lift right behind me. And… here she is."

Moreau didn't respond. EDI did: " _Jeff._ You've dropped your datapad."

Joker's mouth began flapping. Shepard intervened:

"Pilot. If you leave your mouth open, flies will get in."

"You did this deliberately!"

"I'm taking pictures, yes."

 _Time as enemy_

"…and I'm guessing when Rodriguez found that out, she was what you call 'desperate'."

"Desperate enough to get Jack's attention, yeah. Then I saw them with big boss."

Reflectively Toombs leaned back: "So, she learned her lesson you think?"

"Dunno. But that Dr T'Soni gave her a good talking to, and then she had an appointment with Kelly."

"In other words, big boss called in the Marines. Ho, I got a bite!"

Ten minutes later, two three-foot silvery fish swam in the bucket. All Toombs or Hadley could say of them was:  
"That last one dragged us a hundred metres."

"It's not tuna."

"Not salmon, either, but it looks edible."

"Can we go back in now?"

"There's still some light. Bait again, see if big boss wants some."

"She's still too bothered with the kid business, I think. Give it to Juno?"

" _I'll_ cook it. There's no kid problem. Little boss doesn't want baby, big boss will have it, you watch."

"Toombs! I guarantee you, Oriana will want it. And it's not like she's poverty-stricken, she has the means to care for it."

"But she's awful young. Twenty, when the kid was conceived? That's a problem, no? I know she's had a couple of glamorous boyfriends. Baby would cramp her style."

"More than a couple, but I don't think they were for real, except the biotiball guy. She liked him, and his gene scan was clean like Prangley's. The rest were just there for professional decoration, someone to hang on your arm."

"I remember the biotiball guy. Why not latch on to him?"

" _He_ wanted a girl to hang on his arm, but he wasn't really interested in girls."

"Oh."

"He still has her omni-tool code. It's not like they're enemies. Not like the stimsim director. He was going to make a kiss-and-tell about both Lawsons _and_ the Dad."

"Oh yeah. What happened to _him?_ "

"He disappeared for two days. It's not what you think, he ran and hid."

"I know that, but why? That was one time big boss didn't bring _me_ along!"

"I know a _little_ bit more. The director wasn't really the problem anyway. The problem came earlier, the first attempt to stymie him. Lawson bought the production company which had his five-year contract. Should we be talking about this?"

"No. She can feed me to a thresher maw, if she wants. What was the point then?"

"The director was suddenly contractually obliged to do nothing but soft-core Japanese animé porn for the next five years."

"Jeez, Hadley. That's _mean_."

"But profitable. I thought it was fairly creative, actually. Anyway, he complained to his shady Russian pals who sold Lawson's front company the business, and they demanded it back or else. You'll remember what happened next."

"Silly buggers. This would be the Arbat incident?"

"Yep. As I understand it."

"She called me out on _that_ one. We didn't clear it with Pyotr Mikhailovich, and he was _pissed_. Till he was shown the director's emails, and the links with the FBU. So why did the kiss-and-tell director run and hide?"

"He woke up that morning with bloody heads on his pillow, including the _capo_ _d_ _i tutti capi_ of the Russian mafia."

"Oh yeah. I didn't have a lot of space left in my duffle."

"At least you didn't have to arrange them artistically while he snored. I nearly threw up. Ho, another one!"

…

Moments after they tied up to the jetty, the med school shuttle arrived carrying Hannah and Kelly, with Felicia, who waved at them. They waved back.

"Scuttlebutt a year or so ago was that the boy she really wanted in high school, his family moved to Illium when the Reapers hit. I'm not sure _he_ ever noticed _her_ , mind."

"Oh, _f…_ "

"We're all the way out here, Toombs, Jack can't give you a hard time."

"Not taking risks with Jack. But Illium is a dozen years off. If not, I could see Lawson arranging a little transport problem from the Hermitage ski lodge–"

"With the two in unaccustomed propinquity."

"You have to learn how the daughter of the Prince of Darkness thinks. "

"Might not be a dozen years, if Thessia's making relays at its end too."

"Dick, you're not thinking, it doesn't matter. Even if it's only half a dozen years, he'll find someone else before Oriana can claim him back."

"…That's depressing."

"If _you_ think that's depressing, how does little boss feel? I'm going to fry this lot with cajun seasoning, onion, and I think I saw cucumber on the bench."

"It was zucchini. I want to go inside now."

* * *

 _I'm_ _asleep_ _now…_

The door of her Limbo cell softly clicked shut again. It wasn't right. A jail door should _clang_. Oh well. Redemption had been good while it lasted. She allowed herself a wry smile. _Wot prawce selvytion_ _nah?_ Neither Kali nor Lakshmi was interested.

Rasa/Hope/Maya looked around at the low circle of light on her bed's pillow, but right then didn't feel like more light. She had already seen everything here. There was the library terminal, but there hardly seemed any point to illuminating the mind, either. Perhaps the coffee/tea dispenser? _No thank you_. Rest seemed best.

She slipped her fatigues down the laundry chute, slipped into bed, slipped into sleep.

* * *

 _Subtle, what's that again?_

"So what can we discern at this range, gentlemen?"

The turian and salarian scientists paused and put up a schematic of the last two links in the N-chain, plus the proposed final N-18 in red.

"Beyond N-18," began the Salarian, "about twenty light years past a 'cold' dust fluff, there are gravitational waves consistent with a rotating black hole, but infra-red detects only occasional flashes, there's no obvious residual radiation of matter falling to the event horizon from an accretion disk. We can tell there _is_ a disk of ice remnants, the extremities poke out from behind the dust fluff. But the center is gone."

"What does _that_ mean?" The turian took the podium.

"There are similar entities observable in some galactic cores, though this is on a _much_ smaller scale. Basically, the black hole remnant is so old it has cleared the accretion disk to at least a thousand astronomical units around."

" _How_ old is that?" - asked Boris Mikhailovich.

"Roughly two billion years. Rather more than the age of the Leviathan of Dis." This brought murmurings from the assembled brass:

"That's what we're looking for then."

The turian and salarian looked at each other.

"If you don't mind our asking, Admiral, how is a black hole a threat? And how could you fight one?"

"That's for us to know, and the Reapers to find out. Please continue to monitor your instruments, professor. Dismissed."

…

Once the civilian scientists were gone, Garrus – heading up the turian frigate force, the Primarch had refused to allow the Nest attack to be a purely human affair – got up and asked: "What makes us think the Reapers are there, Admiral?"

"There was a QEC communicator in a Collector body picked up from Noveria, Vakarian. It's handshake was not synchronized, the other node of the pair was suffering _severe_ time dilation."

"Oh. So they're hibernating in the time warp of a black hole."

"From the frequency mismatch, we calculate the other end of the node pair is just outside the event horizon. Not necessarily the whole reaper, could be just the computational focus. Probably an anti-rampancy measure."

"Spirits. That's a risk. They must really want the extended lifespans."

"Demons don't get to heaven, Vakarian. Their time in this universe is limited."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #94, "Nemesis to Archangel"_

* * *

Sunday, August 23, 2015


	11. Nemesis to Archangel

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 94 **Nemesis to Archangel  
**

* * *

 _The tip of the spear_

Shepard stood in the cockpit of _Normandy_ while EDI and Joker handled the frigate.

"Man it feels sweet to handle something a bit handier than a dreadnought."

EDI grinned at her best friend forever.

They had backed away from the loading platform next to the penultimate relay, to make room for the 250,000 tonne freighter _Zhukov_ – Mikhailovich was pleased to call it a _troopship_ – arriving out of FTL eight thousand kilometres from the rogue planet.

EDI's mobile glanced back and caught his eye: "Penny for your thoughts, Captain?"

"Hm. A penny, these days, is a credit chit for just one credit – and at that, was worth a lot more than a traditional penny, which is normally footnoted in modern editions of old books as a 'centicredit'. So I suppose it's worth my while answering."

Joker barked a quick laugh. EDI gave him a stern look, and said:

"That's a long way from a joke, Captain."

"You mean 'for' a joke."

"I know what I said."

Joker laughed again. "She's improving, Captain. So, can us pilots know where we're going now? Once _Zhukov_ offloads its conscripts?"

"You sound a bit whiny, Joker. You've got the co-ordinates. Sure you want to know what's there? This could be a hairy delivery. We're having to make it up as we go along, remember. Even this is a bit of a reconnaissance mission. The last one, I hope."

There were two other frigates present, _North Cape_ and _Peacemaker_. Garrus, listening in on TBS, commented:

" _Come on, Shepard, the Primarch's given me the plan and I've told Pilot Nyrek."_

Shepard relented: "I guess at this point you need to know. To begin with, we're not starting side-chains from N-18." Normandy had come from Earth up the N-chain, lastly through N-16, which was the jumping-off point to the engagement zone, and had no less than six side-chains, N-16a through N-16f, delivering eezo and fab'd components for the last push.

"But there's hints of eezo in the absorption spectrum all around," remarked EDI.

"I know, interesting traces. But N-18's going to be just a few light-years from what we think is the Nest."

"Too risky? We have to sneak up shielded by the dust cloud?"

"Going sideways is an _unnecessary_ risk, EDI."

* * *

 _Trouble at t'mill_

Pyotr Mikhailovich had to attend an Alliance conference at Luna City on the way back from the cabin. His mood was already poor; the new officer in charge, Bulanov, was efficient but did not yet have the screws well in hand which meant finding someone who scared them as much as Baba Yaga had.

This was proving unexpectedly difficult.

His mood wasn't any better after stranding Brooks (she wasn't Rasa anymore) back at Limbo following her intolerable outburst. Somehow he had expected a feeling of grim satisfaction, one more enemy of the _Rodina_ crushed.

Unfortunately, she hadn't seemed crushed ( _"Good bye, Admiral. It was an honor and a privilege working with you."_ Then she'd walked with firm step through processing.)

That strangely unsatisfactory outcome was getting on his nerves, for now he had no suitable aide-de-camp for insights into negotiations and morale. Maria had been transferred back from _North Cape_ but she had yet to arrive.

And now he had to cope with Coats asking awkward questions about what he'd done with certain venal Arcturus contractors. _Damn_.

"So. Messrs. David and Loewenstein are in the Luna City brig. Not Limbo."

"Yes, precisely."

"Let them out on bond for good behaviour."

"For Christ's sake, Coats, David under-specified the titanium skin for the defence torus!"

"But as-built, they were to spec. Loewenstein, likewise. Peter, he was just trying to get the contract. He took the cost difference himself–"

"It's the principle. If he cheated on that, what else?"

"We will just have to be vigilant. Make their fines heavy, but let them out. The critical path is already out two days, we need them and their company's expertise. Ah, your secretary is back." And Coats rose, took her hand and kissed the back of it. "Lovely to see you my dear, and I am _so_ glad Bryson can't see this scene."

Pyotr was pleased too, for he'd grown accustomed to Maria's face. But this was a much cooler reception than normal. Maria dimpled very briefly at Coats, just one spark, and sat at table, the perfect composed amanuensis. Mikhailovich glanced at her sharply, but she exuded professional efficiency. Just, not a glimmer of the accustomed smile for her boss. Coats too was puzzled, looking back and forth between them. Mikhailovich sighed: "Fine. A heavy fine, but on good behaviour. Are we done?"

"Thank you. Not quite. A delicate matter seems to have come up. Maria, could you leave us please?"

"Of course, Rear-Admiral Coats." And she departed, with just a hint of flounce.

* * *

 _Waypoints_

The staff planners had produced a set-piece engagement plan of some complexity. Shepard and Vakarian had mixed feelings about that – _No plan survives contact_ – but took comfort from the planners' obvious desire to avoid contact if they possibly could.

Garrus spoke up again: _"_ _So what's in the_ _actual_ _orders?_ _"_

"You can open yours now. Release code _preved-medved_ , that's P-R-E-V-E-D-hyphen-M-E-D-V-E-D. Garrus, I apologize for the russocentric code."

" _Riiight_ … someone's _been this way before. Current station to Archangel, waypoints. Waypoint_ **one** _, N-17 on Nemesis, that's right here. Tick that one off."_

"Wait, Shepard. Where is Archangel? I have no reference."

"Right, sorry EDI. Look, Archangel is ops name for that rogue planetoid about the size of Titan, which _Normandy_ found in the last hairy reconnaissance within the fluff."

"Funny sort of name," said Joker.

"Ashley found it, really," noted EDI. "She told me to look for a magnetosphere bow shock in the fluff. There was something, although weak. All I had to do was follow the admittedly rather weak shock wave to its apex…"

"… and you tripped over the mini-planet. Ash is thinking like N7s, sir."

" _Spirits aid us, then. Waypoint_ **two** _,_ Normandy _to rendez-vous with_ Kilimanjaro _to pick up N-18. You've done that bit."_

"Right. You can pilot the _Normandy_ to Archangel, Joker, but that's why we had to rendez-vous with _Kilimanjaro_ – to disassemble N-18 and pack it in the hold."

"Not that I'm complaining, but why can't _Kilimanjaro_ just come with us to Archangel?"

" _We're stealth, the dreadnought isn't. Too close to the Nest. May I continue?"_

"Oh. Right. Sorry, Garrus, what's next?"

" _Waypoint_ **three** _, Rendez-vous with_ Zhukov, _Of course, Zhukov's the troop transport. Done that too. Launch two iron bubbles stored at Waypoint_ **four** _, ETA five hours after we go. Start mission clock._ Zhukov _to drop troops at Archangel."_

"We're waiting for the go on that. We will be on a tight schedule once they start. The mass of bubble and especially the solid impactors is _huge_ , even compared to a dreadnought. The usual FTL transit through warp space is going to take orders of magnitude longer than a ship – like, four weeks. Got that?

"Yessir. Meet two iron asteroid weapons, start slow FTL bubbles five hours from now aye. Bubble ETA at black hole, four weeks, aye. Troopship to follow behind?"

"That's it. Four weeks is enough time to do another evacuation run. I should mention that last month Mikhailovich also started a _solid_ asteroid impactor with a VI on its way by FTL, ten times the mass but it should get there first, to kick things off. Garrus?"

" _Frigates to_ _run ahead of bubbles,_ _directly to waypoint_ **five** _, Archangel,_ _six parsecs into the dust cloud. Almost out the other side, in fact._ _"_

"But not actually visible from the black hole. We hope."

" _Waypoint_ **six** _,_ North Cape _pick_ _s_ _up pioneer_ _detachment_ _from_ _pylon_ _construction site at Archangel."_

"Exactly. Eva, Nicolaev, that's your responsibility. When we get to Archangel, pick up the pioneers after they unpack the relay from _Normandy_ , and set it on the pylon."

" _The pylon should be finished by now,"_ – Czernykh, over in _North Cape._

Eva's voice came over TBS: _"About that name. On_ North Cape _the crew first began calling the N-18 planetoid, "Archangel" - I think, Boris' idea originally."_

" _Confound it, here was I thinking recognition at last."_

"Keep a lid on it, Garrus. Unless you want all those mercs on your tail again."

Czernykh on _North Cape_ interjected again: _"_ _Eva might not be aware_ _Archangelsk is a port from which the Russian Navy patrolled the Arctic, Shepard. That might have a bearing on the name Boris gave it."_

"Good name. Orders only say where to look for it, and what to do. Laying N-18 on the planetoid, I mean. Garrus, anything else?"

" _Archangel's just before the far end of the cold gas cloud blocking our view of the Nest, so it's hidden,_ _"_ noted Garrus. _"_ _A good forward base, if we can use it."_

"In about four weeks, when the solid impactor hits whatever it finds, there will be more Chinese and Indian conscripts there. It's more than a forward base, it's a _fort._ "

"But Shepard, our planetoid in the fluff is only about a tenth the diameter of the planet below us, which Boris Mikhailovich called _Nemesis_ for some reason. What does it need the troops for?"

"Partly, to guard the relay. Otherwise, they're for _in case_. The Chinese and Russians like to swarm husk armies with even _bigger_ human armies. Since recovering from the Red Flash, the Chinese have wanted their troops back, because they lost about nine out of ten ethnic Han; Indians not much less. But Hackett said too hard, and Mikhailovich agreed. Besides, we might need them, the Indian _dawans_ too."

Czernykh over in _North Cape_ seemed more inclined to listen than chat, but his new AI, Eva Coré, had no such inhibitions about chatting with EDI:

" _Archangel's not a_ huge _rocky planet, EDI, but it's bigger than Mercury. Easily big enough for the N-18 garrison. And Hackett couldn't return them in time."_

" _I see that. We could ferry fifty million troops back with a hundred thousand minifreighter trips, but even putting in another relay and running them at realistic speeds, that would take about half a year."_

" _Or more. Better to put them back in cold sleep and return them home by troopship. It will take another three years, but they'd get home."_

– which Shepard found interesting, because he'd expected the Russian commander to tell his AI to shut up unless spoken to. Funny to see a Russian ship's genius being granted some latitude. Did it have something to do with the "Billy" episode? _Ensign_ Eva having accompanied Admiral Pyotr Mikhailovich to social functions? Or…

"Eva, has Jana loosened your training shackles at all, yet?"

" _Yes, Captain, a little. Just before Overlord left. 'Growing_ _up,' she calls it_."

EDI perked up. "That took _me_ several years, and several traumas…"

"Heh. Like me dropping your shackles abruptly, so you could save the ship."

"The bad things s _tarted_ with Shepard on my case, at Luna," noted EDI. Joker sniggered. Eva overheard via TBS and sympathized with EDI:  
" _I'm in no rush. I have no desire to be hunted either_ … _Again."_

"We're all hunters and hunted. Boss Boris brought _me_ out of cold sleep when we had to place N-16," observed Joker, "and told me _Nemesis_ was an old name for a hypothetical death star…"  
" _Figures_ ," muttered Shepard.  
"… which turned out not to exist…"  
"… Never mind, Joker. I guess now it _does_ exist. _Nemesis_ then. For Reapers, I trust."

* * *

 _Strife on the strand_

"Alright, give."

"Coats, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Coats stared, then nodded slowly. "Let's suppose I believe you, for a moment. Why is Maria suddenly switched off?"

"She's only just walked in from duty on _North Cape_. I've no idea what transpired."

"Peter, I don't think this is a _North Cape_ issue. She has frozen _you_ out. Excluded you from her universe. To you she's a perfect synthetic VI. Surely you noticed? Now _why?_ "

Mikhailovich gaped, seeing the scene as others saw it. _Of course_. Damn!

"Son of a bitch! She's on strike!"

"Eh?"

"Brooks had to be disciplined. I revoked her parole – she's back in Limbo. But how in Christ's name did Maria know?" Coats burst out laughing, and actually fell out of his chair. "That is not helping!" Still giggling, Coats picked himself up and sat at table.

"People tell her things, surely you noticed? Now, what was Brooks' sin this time?"

"A junior aide is not permitted to second-guess their superior officer."

"Say what? That's funny– it's exactly the function I've witnessed Maria perform."

"Rasa, I mean Brooks, made a comment about Federation international policy which was wholly unacceptable, out of line, and…"

"Let's hear it for the word _offensive_. She burst your bubble, right?"

"Brooks compared me, us, to the yahg!"

"Well actually there is sort of a resembl–"

" _Don't_ say it. Worse, she compared the motherland to the Yahg!"

"Heh. And your own circumspection amazes you. Why didn't you have her shot?" This stopped Mikhailovich cold. He thought about it a few seconds, then:

"Actually – I don't know. It never occurred to me. It should have." Mikhailovich continued smoldering a moment, then went on the offensive: "And why is this so funny? _You_ think Russia resembles the Yahg?"

"Of course it does. Ask anyone. The Chinese, say." Mikhailovich slammed a meaty fist on the table. "Temper there," said Coats in an arch received-pronunciation voice.

"This is intolerable."

"Look old friend, and whether you like it or not I _am_ a friend; we have been through much together. Delivering the missile targeting VI turned my hair grey, however briefly. _But._ Your neighbours fully expect you, or your country, to betray them at some point in the future."

"That is still not a very friendly thing to say."

"If you do not know this, Rasa – I'm sorry, Brooks – was quite right to tell you. Peter, some of us love you and even your country despite everything. That has nothing to do with your great Russian souls, _hah_ , nor casual criminality, nor friendship. But a world where Russia is cold and dead would not be pleasant to live in. Of course, that won't prevent us fighting you to the death, probably of both of us, when the time comes."

"Coats! How dare you!"

"I am who I am. You are who you are – a badly behaved cousin; family nonetheless. You would still shaft us in a heartbeat, if you thought you could get away with it."

This was so transparently true Mikhailovich stopped, having no argument against it.

"Listen. Your argument is not with me. Just why has Maria begun working to rule?"

"Is that what you call it?"

"Yes. I know you don't have strikes in Russia. We have many, and a correspondingly large vocabulary for them. 'Working to rule' is a fair description."

"As to _why_ , I don't know exactly. I will demand an answer." At this, James Coats face-palmed:

"Peter, Peter, Peter. That is the worst possible thing you could do. When she refuses to even acknowledge the issue, what do you say to someone like Maria?"

"I will have her–" Somehow an image of Maria before a firing squad, still saying nothing, a mask of calm, sprung to mind. Mikhailovich stopped, heart skipping a beat.

"Say it. Go on, I dare you. My omnitool recorder is running."

"Damn you, Coats. Turn it off! Any _useful_ suggestions?"

Coats thought hard for a minute. "Does Maria ever shade the truth for your ears?"

"Never. I've told her if she does that, I'll send her home. Well, back to the guards."

"Ha! So now she knows that if she shades the truth, she's punished. And with Brooks' example, she knows if she _doesn't_ shade the truth, she's punished even more. That's a classic double bind. I bet the consequences for people like Brooks, Maria or Chambers are why there's so few of them left. Only the ones no-one can bear to–"

"James, you're obviously better at this than me. What else can I do?"

Coats propped his shoes on the table and sat back, thinking, for nearly two minutes. To a russian, Mikhailovich would have growled. But he waited. Eventually:

"Promote Maria. She needs to be an officer for this. Send her to Limbo to apologize to Brooks on your behalf. Your offence is not quite mortal."

"I'm not apologizing to that woman!"

"Call it negotiation, then. They will know what it really means. So will you. While you're at it, second Brooks to the warder of the cabin, dammit. To put the screws on notice."

* * *

 _Nemesis_

"–Well hey, it's the place they launch _you_ from, Captain," remarked Joker; Shepard grimaced. " _Aaand,_ one of the fingers on the button will be Russian. That's serious doom. Death Planet, if not Death Star."

Shepard's wry expression tightened. EDI tried changing the subject:  
"Captain, are we delayed by thawing out of the fighting men on the troopships?"

"The movement orders just say 'wait', EDI. I guess we don't need to know."

" _Boris says no-one knew where_ Zhukov _and_ Massena _were till they turned up,"_ contributed Eva. _"Troopships can't keep up with dreadnoughts so the fleet has to slow down for them. It'll take them all of the four weeks to set up prefab accommodation and dig bunkers."_

"I wondered what the prefab cities were for. So, Nemesis is a troop base too?

"It will be, boss. By the time _Normandy_ comes back from Earth with _Overlord_ and _Pegasus_. That's four weeks away."

"Hm. Nemesis might deserve its name by then. _Pegasus_ will be bringing Javik back from hatching prothean clones back on Arcturus; that's more Reaper doom."

"Any prothean babies, yet?"

"No, just forced-growth clones of the female Traynor and company found on Cronos. They're just about done, Javik says."

"Like the one Cerberus made of you, Captain?"

"Not remotely, Joker. Female and acephalic. But _they_ can bear actual proper Prothean clones - a year from now. Meanwhile, Javik's starting the next batch of acephalic clones."

"Wow. An honest to god baby factory, even so."

"Limited production run only, not more than seven hundred genetically distinct Protheans. Just enough to recover the species, but they won't be out of the bottleneck for many many generations."

The haptic display in front of Joker just then blinked a green hexagon on the movement orders.

"Captain, we are go for Archangel."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #95, "Bubbles"_

* * *

Tuesday, August 24, 2015


	12. Bubbles

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 95 **Bubbles**

* * *

 _The_ _Black Cloud_

The frigates emerged a light year into the cold fluff between Nemesis and the still-unseen black hole (or whatever was generating those gravity pulses). _North Cape's_ signals officer came on TBS:

" _Riley_ _, which frigate should ping?"_

"Secure Argus array for now, Vasili. Shepard?"

"We should be about twenty thousand kilometres from the iron bubbles. Orders list the exact co-ordinates to a 95% sphere of probability, with radius two kilometres. Point there, wake up the phased-array radar and ping, tight-beam."

" _North Cape_ , you do the honors. One ping, please, Vasili, not from Argus, from phased-array battle radar. EDI, bring up our own radar, passive mode _only_."

" _One ping, aye. Eva, send_ Normandy _and_ Peacemaker _the timings."_

EDI's mobile examined the return on her haptic display.

"Exactly as orders specified, Shepard. They're both there, a kilometre apart now."

"Dang," said Joker. "I coaxed those things with _Kilimanjaro_ to within half a klick."

"This is a strange place, Jeff, there's a persistent background electromagnetic pulse, very regular, and gravitational waves too, at the limit of detection. The EM might induce a persistent magnetic dipole in the asteroids, and I'm not sure what the quadrupole gravity waves would do. Especially since they flunctuate in strength."

"Whatever you say, EDI. They were motionless, I'd swear."

* * *

 _The_ _Other_ _Black Cloud_

The interruption to routine came just after the noon exercise break. Not at night, for once. A turian appeared at her door again: _"_ _Visitor, bearing courier valise. Have seen her before,_ _but_ _I have no instructions. You wish to see this person?"_

Brooks had raised an eyebrow. This was unexpected. She had wondered what would happen if Chambers became aware she'd been sequestered again, but there hadn't really been time for her to hear. Besides, in principle Brooks was still serving her sentence.

"Sure. Show her in."

But it wasn't Chambers in the doorway. It was Maria:

"Rasa Lila?"

"Well, well. I'm Rasa again? What unpleasantness does the fleet wish to inflict now?"

* * *

 _A pair of nickel-iron balls_

" _My engineers report "ready to proceed", Captain."_

"Very well, Garrus. All ships, converge on the ping, nice and slow. Expedite."

Twenty-five minutes later… "Riley, your team heads for the nuke. Garrus, Nyrek's for the kinetic impactor, acknowledge."

" _Aye, aye. He's more comfortable not sitting on top of a gigantic nuke anyway."_

With a thicker shell but no lithium hydride and depleted Uranium inside, the impactor was the same weight as the nuke– but much better able to transmit impulse (change of momentum).

" _Just how big IS that thing?"_

"A kilometre across, Garrus, duh. About half a billion cubic metres in volume."

" _Come on, Shepard, you know what I mean!"_

"Well the impactor's mean thickness is fifty metres, about double that of the nuke, so it masses… dammit, Garrus, _you_ work it out."

" _Density of elemental iron is 7870 kilogram per cubic metre, SI units, General Vakarian."_

" _Confound it, Tarquin, what's that in good Hierarchy units?"_

Joker hissed at Shepard, "Good way to distract the bird, boss."

" _It depends on which faction, General, you know there's never been a rationalized system of units in the hierarchy. Human units are actually more straightforward, owing to their French Revolution and succeeding developments."_

'Tarquin' was the AI on board _Peacemaker_ , replacing the Equalizer VI. It could be – when the mood took it – almost as difficult and pedantic, if in the end as loyal and indispensable, as his namesake.

" _I did_ not _want to hear that. So how heavy is the impactor?"_

" _Approximately one and a quarter billion tonne…"_

Shepard whistled under his breath. That would make a hell of a hole in space, even bigger than a Reaper capital ship.

" _Say, what?"_

" _It is a very, very heavy FTL bullet. General."_

"Jesus, Shepard, this is better entertainment than Blasto."

"Shush, Jeff! Or I'll unmute your mike!"

* * *

 _Bigger bangs_

Conventional FTL was used by species who inherited Prothean/Reaper tech.

It depended on an Eezo core to generate a warp torus around the ship, with a corresponding Alcubierre-style warped channel aligned on the spin axis of the eezo core, between two points in Minkowski four-space, generally millions of kilometres long, continously created and recreated at each end.

" _Say that in familiar numbers."_

" _About one and a quarter trillion kilograms? Will that do?"_

An FTL channel thus forms a very very long, thin, moving string of bent spacetime.

Ships still had to engage thrusters to move within their channel, of course, the thruster energy being in effect multiplied by the channel, but there was negligible Lorentz effect – no space contraction or time dilation – within the channel.

Within a mass-effect generated Alcubierre channel the space-time metric was so warped that _Normandy's_ channel-frame speed of, say, sixty thousand kilometres an hour translated to endpoint-frame speeds of around fourteen light-years _per day_.

Reapers used the same principle but managed speeds about twice that, 30ly/d.

The existing hacked FTL controllers steered a missile into its target while the warp field was still up, which meant that all the energy of the warp collapse was released as heat at the point of impact.

" _That is NOT helping. What's the mass-energy on impact?"_

By 2187, it was well understood that energy for an Alcubierre-style mass effect FTL transit came not from the Eezo core directly, but from the Casimir vacuum effect.

" _Do you mean the vacuum energy for the warp channel?"_

Transit energy was pulled from the vacuum energy of the universe at the leading end of the moving warp tube, as the ME3 core passed along; then, at the trailing end, most of it returned to the underlying vacuum substrate.

" _FTL warhead damage is not impact damage as such, general. Most of the energy results from the collapse of the Alcubierre field and appears as heat."_

The difference between vacuum energy withdrawn and returned, appeared as the transit energy of the ship. It depended on the ship's mass, and in-channel velocity. The potential catastrophe with any Alcubierre-style drive, as had been known since the early 1990s, arose when the FTL transit _ended_ , as Garrus well understood:

" _I_ know _. This warhead should pierce Reaper armor. Let's try for impulse, not heat."_

With current tech, transit energy dispersed when an electromagnetic potential along the spin axis of a mass effect eezo core was lowered; the _rate_ of voltage drop was crucial. A curious side effect of _suddenly_ switching off the eezo core arose from space-time around the ship's motion no longer being warped.

Switching off the core too fast did not mean that the ship traveled faster than light in unwarped space. Instead, a rapid warp collapse meant that the transit energy did not have time to return through the torus field to the vacuum substrate. It re-appeared as ordinary kinetic energy, mediated by gravitational waves.

" _Surely you don't intend the impactor to exit FTL just before impact?"_

Much of the vacuum energy would be imparted to the eezo drive's torus field, and when that dropped, to the ship. Following the usual Lorentz formula, that meant suddenly traveling extremely close to _c_ , the speed of light.

" _The hell I don't. I want to replicate the catastrophe experiments."_

* * *

 _Red Banner_

Brooks took in Maria's new rank tabs:

" _Ensign_ Maria. I'm actually impressed. Shipboard life must agree with you."

"Shipboard?" Big sigh from the little Russian: "I wish."

"Poor Maria. You're back with the Admiral, now?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Let me guess, he missed having people tell him the obvious."

"Yes, I think so. Though I don't think our commentary was all that obvious _to him_." ( _Past tense_ , noted Brooks.) "Rasa, I'm not here to make your life more difficult–"

"Glad to hear it."

"–I think. Today I'm Pyotr's _porte-parole_ , doubly indirect by way of Coats."

"His _what?_ "

Maria began waving her arms in the beginnings of distress. "His spokesperson! It's French! Coats' word for it, the way he used it means something like ambassador!"

"Coats." Said by Brooks in a flat even tone.

"Yes! Look, I'm only here because Coats is one of the very few people Pyotr will take schtick from! He arranged this and Pyotr agreed to it, sort of! Please Rasa, I've no idea what they did to you or you did to them, but this is important to me. Just listen!"

Brooks sat like the sphinx for five seconds, then relaxed.

"All right. What is this Coats, Mikhailovich, whatever, _thing?_ "

* * *

 _A matter of scale_

Now Shepard knew what Tarquin and Garrus were 'discussing'. The hacked FTL controllers of FTL missiles were _cosmically_ dangerous.

Especially when switching them off!

" _Just don't tune the FTL to drop the voltage too fast."_

What Garrus was proposing was to make use of this as a weapon. If properly done, a significant amount of the vacuum energy would reappear as impulse along the core's axis, and ultimately as kinetic energy.

Instead of flashing into plasma from radiation, anything in the way would be physically knocked about a bit.

On a couple of memorable occasions, Batarian warships – never very well run – had experienced the eezo core rip itself from the frame mounts, and continue on its merry way at speed, roughly 0.999998c, exploding a tunnel down the length of the ship in the process.

The speed was only an estimate. On one occasion the ship had been pointing at the system primary, which flared, and on another occasion at one of the system asteroid mines, which was thereafter iron vapor and a rapidly expanding debris field.

" _Garrus. This is Captain (D). That's an unnecessary risk."_

Shepard was not very subtly reminding Garrus of his superior line rank as flotilla commander.

" _Listen up. We've known since the early 2000s that the resulting explosion for a large starship, like a dreadnought or a troopship, would release energy comparable to the annihilation of an equivalent amount of antimatter."_

Unfortunately, if the voltage wasn't carefully ramped down, the FTL channel might collapse _completely_ before returning _any_ energy to the universal vacuum substrate.

Such a collapse would be so rapid that the _virtual_ particles trapped within the eezo particle layers would become _real_. The effect, tested twice in remote star systems, had been so violent that no data sensors within 20AU survived.

Since the channel was typically a hundred ship diameters wide and as long as the FTL transit, this was a huge volume of space, and the vacuum energy expectation value was on a cosmic scale. It had been hypothesized that some of the stranger supernovae in distant galaxies were due to the abrupt collapse of an FTL channel. Which probably meant those galaxies did not have Reapers to enforce a safe design of FTL controller.

" _I do realize that, Shepard,_ we've _known the theory for a thousand years."_

Now Garrus was not very subtly reminding Shepard that turians had spaceflight when crusader knights and mongol tribesmen were on horseback.

Actually the mass effect FTL mechanism was still far from understood, by either civilization, but it was known each layer of particles in a spun-up core with a charge applied acted as a directional coupler for radiation from the vacuum field at fantastically short wavelengths.

Czernykh especially was not impressed by antiquity of knowledge.

" _You mad turian! We'll be way beyond gamma rays! Complete disruption of the system primary is not out of the question!"_

" _This system doesn't_ have _a system primary!"_

"Everybody, calm down a minute. Garrus, have you actually run numbers on this? I have. Anybody else? Tarquin? EDI? Eva?"

There was general negative rhubarbing over TBS.

"All right. Garrus, your familiar twelve-metre FTL missile for your blitz pack. What mass is that?"

" _Erm… About 2500 kilograms, if you're looking for a figure for mass m."_

"Sounds right. EDI, what's the mass energy of one of those? The usual _E = mc²_?"

"On the order of ten to the power of twenty Joules. In more comprehensible units, about fifty thousand megatons. Say a thousand Big-Ivan H-bombs. But Shepard, that's assuming complete mass-energy conversion."

"Right, which won't happen. But it gets worse. Suppose it can cross the seven light years in about half a day. What's the Lorentz gamma for that?"

"5113.45 or so. A little over five thousand."

"So if one of those runs into a Reaper at speed how much energy is available for transfer to the Reaper? Over, say, a time of one second?"

"Relativistic kinetic energy would be Ek = (gamma-1) x M x c² , more than ten to the twenty-fourth Joules. About 275 million megatons. Shepard, Earth's sun only puts out around 386(10^26) Watts, that is, Joules per second. For a brief period such a missile would transmit three percent of the total power of the sun."

" _Wow. I knew there was a reason I liked those things."_

Riley spoke up for the first time. "Vakarian, don't forget only a fraction of that gets transmitted to the Reaper, maybe two percent, because most of the thing goes straight through and in sixty-five million years will ruin some planet's day."

" _That's still, what, five million megatons? Good-bye, Reaper."_

"We're not finished. EDI, run the numbers for these bubbles. Very roughly, they are iron spheres a kilometre across, wall about fifty metres thick. Mass?"

"More than a trillion kilo. About a billion tonnes."

"I get that too. Suppose _that_ monster is much slower, it takes fifty days to cross seven light years. What's the gamma?"

"A little more than fifty, sir. Much less than the five thousand for the missile."

"Sounds right. Impact relativistic impact energy?"

"One and a half quadrillion megatons."

" _What's a quadrillion?"_

"Ten to the fifteenth power, Garrus."

" _Spirits."_

"You ain't seen nothing yet. EDI, if all that is converted in one second, what's the power output?"

"About fifteen thousand suns, Shepard. Of course, as Riley observed, most of that power would be wasted. Just like if it hit the Reaper while still in FTL, most of the energy would revert back to the vacuum substrate of the universe."

"But the Reaper would be dead."

" _Jupiter_ would be dead, Captain. To answer your question, yes. But the main thing is the impactor core will keep going."

"And hit somebody, something, sometime."

"Yes, sir. Entirely irresponsible."

"Understand now, Garrus? I decline to permit a fifteen thousand sun flashbulb which will hit someone else, some day. We don't touch the hacked FTLs. Clear?"

" _Killjoys, all of you."_

* * *

 _Offer_

The newly minted ensign closed her eyes, placed her palms on the table, and before Brooks' eyes her face showed a hatchet-faced man without ever ceasing to be Maria:

" _Brooks. Or Rasa, as Peter would have it. We, I mean he, would negotiate your release on your own recognizance, for the good of the service, in order that you assist the Warder of the cabin with oversight duties on Peter's behalf, one week in five. If this is acceptable, then subject to satisfactory performance the first week, you would be discharged by Spectre pardon. You would then be offered a commission with a view to assisting the Admiralty with duties similar to those performed previously."_

Maria's face then cleared; she looked up, exhaled. Brooks' eyes were quite round–

"What?"

"Vishnu! That's a pretty good parlour trick, girl!"

 _Consideration_

"Is that staggering performance the only copy?"

Maria blinked, picked up her valise. "No. There's a paper in here with Pyotr's holograph. It only needs yours to be a done deal. Otherwise, I burn it."

Another brief silence. For once Maria could actually 'see' the wheels turning in Rasa's head, till she came out with:

"This is an apology."

"Well – yes. I suppose it is. Sort of. So long as we don't actually say so. Agreed?"

"Not yet. Why is this important to _you_?"

"It's all tied up with me replacing you. What happened to you, could happen to me."

"Hm. I don't think so. Take the job. At least the promotion's useful. More money?"

"No! I used to be a service chief! I'm bottom face on the totem pole, again, actually paid _less_. And I have to fill out all this _paperwork._ , and answer for it! The whole thing was a bit dramatic, and Coats was grinning at me the whole time!"

"Well that's trauma right there."

"Actually I think he kind of likes me. But I was fired from the Alliance! Well, honorably discharged for the good of the service. Then I was fired from the Kazan guards! Same thing."

"Did you get back pay?"

"Oh yes. That was a _good_ thing. But then he took me to a different office and I was sworn in as an Alliance officer! I'm supposed to go to university after this is all over!"

"Promotion must have had some reason behind it. No more jerking around by the enlisted men here, or anywhere, for one. Or by the Admiral, even. Brilliant, Coats."

"Leaving _North Cape_ wasn't my idea, though. I liked my job, and I was good at it."

"What _was_ your job? Are you allowed to say?"

"Don't see why not. I qualified on the comm board then went to nav console two till _North Cape_ became flag leader, working up a squadron of twelve new small frigates for anti-piracy duties. They fight as a destroyer flotilla."

"Twelve is too many for pirate missions. They'd form four flights or 'sections' of three frigates."

"Except in fleet actions. Which someone must be planning, I guess. Anyway, I was sent back to train snotties on comm duties. Me, an NCO!"

"Well that's already a good reason to make you an officer. Ensign Maria, heh."

 _Con_ _tingencies_

"Thing is, only a third of the crews are Russian, the rest speak English or court turian. I had to school all the destroyer comm leaders in a kind of tactical pidgin just so they could fight together."

That was impressive. _Tenacious climbing rose_. "Who did they replace you with?"

"A snotty. The captain was upset too, but not as much as me. I protested, but Captain Czernykh said the proper response was _Aye, aye_. So I said _aye aye, sir_ and shut up."

"Mm hm. But your Captain saw you were miserable."

"Well, yes… Even with the promotion. Thing is, _North Cape_ was exciting, and they didn't want to lose me either. So I asked if it was okay to call the Admiral's aide, that is, you. To find out if something could be done. And the captain said, just don't backtalk the Admiral. But then I couldn't get your extranet connection. After a bit of digging, I found you were in disgrace. And why. So now the Admiral – if I put a foot wrong…"

"Mm. I'm beginning to appreciate your position."

 _Force majeure_

"So then I tried to call Chambers. Shepard's, um. Friend. Joined at the hip. She said to call her when I got into trouble. I think she meant, certain men. There have been a couple of importunate officers. Pyotr brought the hammer down. Does that count?"

"Not in quite the same way. A different sort of man problem. Wise move, though."

"Told her your problem too. I thought, working the angles, Shepard's a Spectre."

"Maria, she can't be seen to exert influence. Not in this. And _he_ would do his duty."

"I knew that, but I needed to _talk_ to someone. Trouble was, I couldn't get a secure line and she couldn't speak in confidence. She just told me to do whatever I was told."

"Not very helpful."

"That's what I said. I was taking it out on _her_ , which I'm not proud of."

"I think she'd understand. Did she tell you to call back?"

"No. She said to listen very carefully, that she wasn't suggesting I obey an unlawful order, but I should do _exactly what I was told._ "

Brooks' eyes went round again.

"Oh. Oho. Oh, ho ho ho. Oh, that's so cute. That classy, clever…"

"Yes. And then I got it. Could have kicked myself. Am I really that dumb?"

"No, Maria. Just young. But so is she. Really, I'm going to have to stop under-estimating anyone associated with Shepard. And especially her. Damn, she's good!"

"I only had to do it once and that British admiral twigged. I _think_ that's one reason why I'm here."

"Yeah. He's no slouch either. I wonder how he happened to be there."

 _Acceptance_

Maria was thoughtfully considering the remark about Coats. Rasa waited.

"No idea. He does see Pyotr regularly on business. Kelly did say something odd."

"Oh?"

"She said to tell you, _Such very good bait. Well wriggled._ "

Wasn't much point in dragging this out further. Rasa had all she needed to know.

"I accept Peter's offer, by the way. This place is boring."

Maria's face lit in relief – not a show, she had been under some strain – saying:

"In that case, Rasa Lila, I'm supposed to take you out of here, and straight to Coats."

'Rasa' chuckled, and pulled her old Alliance fatigues from the closet.

"You know what the Americans call an enlisted man made an officer?"

"A mustang. Rasa, I am no-one's pony!"

Rasa grinned wider, struggling with her uniform.

"It means you're a wild thing, sweetheart. As are we all. Welcome to your first bit of chicanery."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #96, "One and two and me and you"_

* * *

Thursday, August 27, 2015


	13. One and two and me and you

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 96 **One and Two and Me and You**

* * *

 _Guiding_ _S_ _pirit_

At Joker's urging, the two frigates had by now stopped at a point about three metres above their respective bubbles. _Peacemaker_ and _Normandy_ opened their loading bays and a team left from each frigate. Since iron bubbles were a human (specifically, Russian and UNAS) innovation, these engineering teams were under humans, Kozlo and Riley – still Garrus' human liaison.

There was one last modification to perform. The teams headed for the maintenance and operational hatches; Riley had charge of the nuke, Kozlo the impactor.

" _EDI. The VI cores are online and the QECs running. We are ready for the VI foci, for One and Two."_

" _Acknowledged. Transmitting."_

The engineers observed the holograms appear above the control modules.

" _Good morning, Mira. Captain Shepard has asked how you feel about guiding a titanic nuke."_

" _A little apprehensive. I'm not supposed to be, but I am."_

" _We'll have you back after a month. Have all systems come on-line yet?"_

" _Not the backup reactor, it will take another thirty seconds, and there seems to be an issue with forward terminal guidance camera C-5."_

" _Ah. Bring up the status LED for me, I'll have a look. Kozlo, how's your team?"_ As Riley jetpacked some eight hundred metres to the defective camera, Kozlo responded:

" _No worries. The turian VI is up and running, no issues except bad attitude and the reactor's a bit slow to come online."_

" _Good. I'm fixing a camera, someone left the lens cap on, be with you shortly."_

" _Can't be too soon. Turian VIs are enthusiastic little psychopaths if you ask me."_

Riley arrived at the green LED. Six forward cameras linked as a synthetic aperture were installed at a five-metre plate at the "front" along the eezo core spin axis. The LED was on one of them. The problem was obvious. With a muffled curse, Riley sprayed hi-vacuum silicone, then tapped the sliding cover, which slid back.

" _Crap. These things have been sitting here too long. They've vacuum-welded stuck for lack of lubricant. Mira, actuate the covers again, please."_

All six camera covers clicked shut, open, and shut again. Riley sprayed them all.

" _Open and close them every day during the mission, Mira."_

" _Nominal, now. Thank you."_

* * *

 _Null map_

Rasa returned from her first full day assisting Bulanov to find her cell door wouldn't open. She stood back in some confusion a moment, till hearing a cough behind her:

"…Apparently the person called Brooks is no longer in Limbo."

It was her turian jailor from the cabin. Sree. A biotic female, exceedingly rare.

"I'm sorry? And why are you here?"

"You are now a civilian on the Alliance payroll, no? A 'contractor.' As such, not a prisoner of any kind. And _I_ am no longer on the cabin staff. Reassigned."

"Ah. Damn. I'll have to find an apartment in Luna City, buy some basics and pay rent from a non-existent bank account. Can I at least get my stuff?"

"General Vakarian instructed me to retrieve what could be identified as personal belongings. If you would follow me?"

 _O-_ kay. Someone clearly liked a bit of melodrama. And this turian ex-jailor was now walking like an upper-tier cabal trooper. Now _that_ was anomalous.

"The last time I saw citizen Vakarian–" (a wry quirk of the mouth on the turian) "–his gun hand was twitching to shoot me in the back if I made any kind of break for it."

"Yes." Sree turned and soon they were proceeding with due speed down Recovery road. "Attempted murder soured him. Of course they left your trap in ten minutes."

"Ah. I've always wondered about that." The turian trooper glared, then grinned.

"When you were researching Shepard's team, did you actually pay _attention_? Being locked in an unbreakable force field in an archive pod was a walk in the park."

"But we got the whole squad bar Lawson in those vaults! How _did_ he– they– get out?"

"Did you? _I_ don't know. And that would be telling, anyway. I would not enlighten you, even by default, as to how they might or might not have busted themselves out."

"Oh, come _on_." –as winsomely as Rasa could. But this didn't work on turians, yet:

"Fine. The general's an escape artist, and Shepard's a ghost, walks through walls."

Rasa sputtered, but then: _Hanuman_. _Could that be true?_ The insufferable cabal just kept walking with a turian grin till moments later they arrived at out-Processing.

"Always wondered if I'd make it here."

"So did the General. He thought you would, but not this way, and your next stop would be the crematorium. His words were, _I've got her painted, she's mine_."

Swallowing hard, Rasa proceeded to the desk.

"So where do I go from here?"

* * *

 _Night terrors_

Miranda woke in the night for reasons she couldn't put a finger on, except fragmentary remnants of a weird dream.

"…Juno, is anything happening?"

" _No, Miranda. I detect nothing unusual."_

 _Something's changed._ Her instincts were far from foolproof, but she hadn't survived getting on for forty years without paying attention. She got up, quietly dressed, and advised Juno she'd be at the house.

Hadley was Deck Officer, this watch. "Ma'am? Can I help?"

She paused at the airlock, thinking. "Is Jack awake?"

"No, ma'am. She went to bed muttering about sunstroke."

"Serves her right for playing beach volleyball without sunblock. Fine. Never mind, Hadley. I'll be back."

* * *

 _Watch the sky_

The cockpit of _Normandy_ had more than the usual number of watchers. Garrus did the honors as the great grey-green unpainted, uneven, pitted iron spheres moved off:

"They're under thruster power –" remarked Kirrahe. Traynor nodded, knowing propulsion thrusters would need to be used in earnest during FTL.

"Just a check pulse, though it gets them from the launch point."

An Alcubierre drive warped space but did not motivate the mass to traverse the warp channel. This was the principal reason FTL of the iron bubbles was so slow. Traynor observed how Shepard watched, his demeanor critical: "Problem, sir?"

"I'm bothered about the turian VI. Never saw such a gung-ho machine."

"I've met a few, sir, on training exercises with Garrus' ground troops. They're all like that. It's supposed to be some sort of motivator. _'What, the machine will go where you_ _w_ _on't?_ _What sort of rascal are you?_ _'_ sort of thing."

"Hm. The sort of rascal that wants to live forever, if they were human. We do the reverse. We just sent Mira on a task too risky for humans."

"Look, Shepard, I know Mira's pretty advanced, but be fair, there's no point in equipping one of these bubbles with a long-term life-support chamber."

"I know. A VI is the only realistic option. All the same, I want her back."

" _Starting mission clock on my mark. Three. Two. One. MARK. Fire One and Two."_

The bubbles vanished.

" _Duty done, boys and girls. Going home. See you later, Shepard._ Peacemaker _, out."_

* * *

 _Cash injection_

Sree didn't seem to think accommodation would be a problem:  
"Just get an apartment in Luna City."

"How? I have no funds beyond the fifty credits any detainee gets on release."

"Ah. My bad." The cabal saluted the duty officer. "Personal belongings of Brooks, please, and the package for Rasa Lila."

The OIC retrieved a small suitcase, quite new, and a paper-wrapped purse.

"Who is this from?"

"The suitcase is a gift from me, to hold your stuff. The purse is from – well open it."

Inside, there was a credit wand, chits for several hundred credits, and a note:  
 _Lilium. This is from me. But you don't owe me._

Lawson! This was getting weirder by the minute.

"Okay. Tell her thank you."

"I've never met her. But somebody will let her know."

"How much is on the wand?"

"Officer, allow Brooks to check her wand balance." The holodisplay sprang to life.

"That can't be right!" The desk officer looked stunned. Cabal Sree looked a little shocked too:

"You could buy a house!"

"Yeah. Well, unless I've lost my touch, I could get that together in a week or so. But no. Now I don't have to do certain things. Whatever she says, I do owe her."

Sree considered that, and replied:

"You do. If you see that, there is hope for Hope. Lieutenant, the suitcase now."

The desk officer opened the suitcase, and presented a datapad.

"Inspect the contents. I would not recommend wearing that uniform in public. Palm acceptance of the list of personal belongings, please, when ready."

Her sidearm, no clip, an M-11 Suppressor. Gosh, her Cat6 uniform. Shield fibres unpowered. No flexarmor undergarments, but those knickers had been pretty much knackered. Even her Phantom energy palm. Discharged, but functional. Her journal. Her knife.

It looked like everything she valued was there.

 _No, wait_.

"One thing is missing. A white medal case."

* * *

 _There's a light_

The night light on in the house nursery had to mean Chambers was up.

None of the other inhabitants were present. Hannah was away on the Citadel answering interminable questions about Russian executions and the UNAS Presidential succession. John was away getting ready to rip Reapers a new one. Hackett was off at Arcturus – deploying the fleet's limited numbers of new destroyers against petty pirate kingdoms, or rescuing divided, isolated, and demoralized colonies.

Most troubling, Oriana's confinement was imminent; she was at the medical school, not enjoying any of it and inclined to snap at her sister. That was new, and upsetting, and the reason why Kahlee, not Miranda, was watching over Oriana on the maternity ward in Russell.

Miranda paused at the threshold. The access door showed orange, then white.

It recognized her. Should she go in?

Chambers wasn't hostile, but Miranda still suffered an obscure sense of guilt in her regard which meant she still slept on _Overlord_. Officially, they were all on shore leave. To Miranda this was, if not enemy territory, a kind of no-woman's land.

And then the decision was made for her. The access panel keyed green. _Push on_.

* * *

 _Sacrifices_

"You surely don't expect humans to pilot a bomb? Mira's just a VI."

"The Japanese did, in the second Terran War. And again just recently. It's the reason there are still any Japanese at all."

"You're kidding! Anyway, why the fuss about a VI?"

"Look up _Divine Wind_. Ask Kasumi or Maeko. Traynor, how long did you work with Mira?"

"Just a week, sir, after the STG pried her focus core from Peak 15's wreckage."

"You will know what I mean, then. What were _STG_ doing there?"

"That was me, Shepard," said Kirrahe. "Liara insisted on it, don't know why. Ashley – Commander Williams – went along, also don't know why. Vakarian said it was foolishness, and I agreed, but I'm seconded to this ship by the STG and I go where the captain says. That would be you, now. I used the only excuse I could think of and brought an STG team to pick over some of the crap Binary Helix was up to."

"Was it profitable?"

"Oh yes. Better than _our_ crap, especially the Rachni innovations. Got another commendation. From Valern! But T'Soni insisted on bringing back that VI's focus."

"Good. I owe her, again. Gentlemen, flotilla action order; let's go home."

* * *

 _Missing value_

The turian desk officer sniffed at the mention of the medal case:  
"Confiscated. There is no way you merit the award of the Shanxi Star."

Turning, Rasa fixed the cabal with a stare. Sree shrugged:  
"The officer is quite correct. Clearly contraband."

"You know," Rasa said slowly, "I can feel myself beginning to be _very upset_. So I'm going to imitate someone I know, and just calm down. Wait a moment." She began:

" _Ooooouuuum._ " Then she opened her eyes, noting the alarm in turian eyes, and Sree's vision flicking to a point above and behind her. Rasa spread her arms out at the elbow, added: _"Om. Ma._ _N_ _i. Pad._ _M_ _e. Huuuum."_ Then she stopped.

Cabal Sree was glaring, and the desk officer's hand was hovering over a button. Well. She _had_ left the medal 'on.'

Perhaps this was _karma_ for _dharma_.

"Now," began Rasa, feeling calm for once, "I'm not going to _demand_ the item back. But I will tell you that this is not a test of me. It is not even a test of you. It is what I hear Shepard would call a fork in the road."

"Is that a threat?" asked the cabal. "I thought you were better than that."

They contemplated one another briefly. Astonished at how strangely accepting she felt, Rasa responded, deliberately and conversationally:

"Actually, I rather liked you, too. While this does make me sad, to explain is not my place. Keep it, then. But keeping that item will have consequences. I will not enlighten you, even by default, as to what those consequences might be. But I _guarantee_ you the turian hierarchy will wish it had not picked up this Shanxi souvenir."

"Cheap bravado," spat Sree. Rasa nodded slowly, and folded her arms:

"I have only one question, really." She turned, looked up, saw a glint on the corner of a warehouse superstructure which instantly disappeared, fixed her gaze there, said:

"Ask Archangel. Does Shepard know that my medal case was confiscated?"

Then she turned back. Cabal Sree was about to say something, but put two fingers to her ear – an incoming encrypted comm: she listened and nodded. Turned to the desk officer and instructed him:

"Lieutenant, Ms Rasa Lila is to have the cased medal returned forthwith."

"But–"

" _Right now_ , Lieutenant."

* * *

 _Over at the Frankenstein place_

The kitchen table held physiology texts open at Arrhenius plots of blood gases. Also, digital ink looping an appendix removal, _eww_. This stuff should be in the study.

Low lighting was on under the kitchen range hood and over the sink, but no Kelly. Miranda automatically started the jug – no VI here – for coffee and proceeded towards the nursery. Kelly was just finishing up with Felicia from a bottle.

"Hello?"

"Miranda. Here, grab this would you." Kelly passed over formula, a toddler-food pottle, and a paper Dispose-All bag with… something evil-smelling within.

"Don't ask."

"I won't. Where does it go?"

"The bottle and teat in the bowl on the zinc bench. The rest… you'll figure it out."

She did, too. Then she carefully scrubbed, wiped, and dried her skinsuit gloves. Thoughtfully, she took them off and stowed them, then prepared … chocolate, she decided, not coffee. Kelly came through, looking a bit pale and second-hand, just as she was putting the milk back in the refrigerator.

"You're tired."

"No kidding. I have a physiology examination tomorrow afternoon, and other issues. What are _you_ doing up?"

"Couldn't sleep. Who's examining you?"

"Wish I had that problem. Don't you _dare_ bribe him!"

That thought had in fact crossed Miranda's mind, but was almost instantly tossed:  
"I won't. I can't, Chloe's staff seem disgustingly loyal and unbribable, and Chakwas is integrity personified. I mustn't, because I'm already in enough trouble with Hannah, and I've done things to you I can't forget, and I get the feeling Hackett has given me just enough rope to hang myself. Most of all I don't need to. You can calculate exponential decay in your head from a log plot, and _y_ _ou_ will _ace_ that exam."

Miranda was paying very careful attention to Chambers' face. It had been a picture while she said this. Actually several pictures in quick succession. She couldn't usually read Kelly like this. The kid really must be tired.

"Well… fine. Actually I'm too far gone to think about it."

"Here. Chocolate, and a tiny bit of rum. Then go sleep."

"Thanks, but I can catnap. Can't dream though, really. I have to keep an ear out for Felicia. It all starts again in two or three hours. Four, if I'm lucky."

"So how on _Earth_ are you going to do your exam tomorrow?"

"I'll call a skycar and see if I can drop Felicia off at the Institute crèche. I'm supposed to book but they changed the exam time. I think they'll let her in."

"They do that? Change the time?"

"There's only seven students in the class and the examiner's a busy doctor with emergencies of his own. Wait, I didn't hear John in your list."

"Um. John… it's complicated. Shepard would take a dim view of me corrupting a benign institution. Beyond that… I've had my ups and downs. Mostly downs, he had to extract Oriana from the consequences of my own stupidity."

"I remember that." Chambers took a long draught of the chocolate.

"Did Shepard tell you about it when we got back?"

"Not then. Actually the first details came from Ori's point of view. It sounded like you didn't have a lot of options."

"No. But I didn't handle even those terribly well. To be exact, I stuffed up. With my friend, not my enemies."

"It turned out okay in the end."

"Not for Niket. I did have Shepard with me, yes. I'll never forget the look of shock on that Eclipse vanguard's face when he shot her half-way through her biotic charge – he's some sort of freak that way. But I think I've exhausted my credit with him."

Chambers' face was suddenly unreadable again. The chocolate and rum must be doing something.

"Miranda. Why ever would you think that?"

"I can't really talk about it."

There was an uncomfortable pause.

* * *

 _Mapping_

Luna City was pleasant and her duties were light. Afternoons, Rasa would check on Jana. Had she made any progress with Trevor and Lisa? (Now employed as janitors for the lab studying them.) The response was uniformly discouraging:

 _We only get one shot at this, Rasa. Patience. Say after me:_ Ooooouuuum. _Heh.  
_ Damn Professor-Doktor and her kickass sense of humor. So, word of Rasa's little drama had spread. She really didn't know if this had been a good thing, or not.

It had been some days since Jana had gone back to _Overlord_. Maelon was still here though, and he seemed to have pushed Jana's plan a bit further:

"I can reverse the Salarian bridgework, Rasa. That's deterministic. And Jana can do the same for the Cerberus material. The problem is the Reaper synapse drift."

* * *

 _A certain kind of light_

"Look, I'll give Felicia this, what is it, some sort of yoghurt? You go to sleep."

"Um…"

"Or… if it's hard to trust me, I could dig Matsuo out of her XO's bunk."

"Toombs wouldn't thank you. Felicia doesn't know Maeko, yet."

"He knows necessity. So does Maeko. And Felicia knows about potential mothers."

"But _none_ of you have ever fed a baby. Except Jack, and the circumstances when that happened were indescribable."

Well that explained a few things, but this was no time to ask for details.

"Okay. I'll hang around a few hours till the next wail, then you can show me. Us."

Kelly had an amazing laugh; it relieved some tension. Miranda pushed her luck.

"That physiology bit on blood velocity by Doppler effect is old tech, by the way. These days it's all done with nanites in the bloodstream reporting to the tricorder."

"There speaks a true scientist with an up-to-date med lab. That doesn't work if you're treating refugees, or colony workers in the sticks, or babies just born."

This flummoxed Miranda, but she ploughed on: "I can still wield a spoon. I'll need some practice, when Oriana delivers."

"All right, but…" Miranda felt like she was being weighed in some kind of balance. _Please God let me not be found wanting._ "…you have to tell me something."

 _Uh-oh._ "What?"

"Who's the father?"

Right then, Miranda felt like time slowed to a stop.

* * *

 _Sur_ _jection_

Leaving Trevor and Lisa with permanent suicidal tendencies after exposing the Reaper's indoctrination paths did not seem like a good idea.

"I can understand why you don't yet want to remove the Salarian bridges over the Reaper changes, Maelon. But I thought it wasn't just synaptic changes, there were electrochemical memory changes too?"

"Yes, those are present. But I can deal with those, fake engrams are tagged with their Reaper origins. The brains can't tell that, but my nanites can. Problem is, I don't know the Reaper algorithm for the synaptic paths. I can map the changed paths, and invert the map to something human. But many human possibilities exist in the domain. The mapping is onto, but not one-to-one. You will get two humans back…"

"Just… not the same ones. I see."

* * *

 _That never shone on me_

"…You should ask Oriana. Or Chloe."

"I don't have to ask Ori. I wouldn't put Chloe Michel in that position. And I'm asking _you_."

"How should I know? Am I my sister's keeper?"

"Just how does not concern me. Yet. And yes, you are."

"…You can tell, can't you. How?"

"Little things. It only crystallized this evening."

"And they call _me_ scary. Is this some sort of test?"

"It's… more like a fork in the road."

 _Oh hell._ "What's the fuss? I don't have to lumber you all with this, I can vanish."

"Because one day they will reach puberty, and Murphy says they will meet. Also the father _will_ know, eventually, just by looking. Unless you _and_ Oriana vanish. Which would mean the son never knows the father, too."

"He mustn't know." Miranda felt like she was developing an ulcer.

"Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know. Save me."

"I think not. You must save yourself."

"He'd kill me."

"Is that what you would do? I suppose it would be a life for a life."

Bent over in pain, Miranda tried to hide her face.

"For the last time, Operative Lawson, _I'm still asking you_."

* * *

 _Next chapter: #97, "We have to talk about this"_

* * *

Friday, August 26, 2015


	14. We have to talk about this

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 97 **We have to talk about this**

* * *

 _Zero_

At 1520 hours on the return journey to N-17 Shepard was woken by an alert from Joker: _"_ _Captain, we're about to come up on the predicted FTL track of Zero."_

"What's zero? Another nuke?"

" _No, sir. It's the rocky iron_ solid _impactor the 63rd. Flotilla fired off last month while we were mounting N-16. Remember? Mikhailovich's first FTL bullet."_

"Ah… That must be _really_ slow in FTL. What's the point?"

" _There's supposed to be a Cherenkov shock and Traynor wants to get readings. As for why it even exists, Boss Boris just said it was his way of saying, 'I don't fart around, I piss with precision in your general direction.' The Russians seem to have a thing about that."_

"It's cross-cultural. Cortez has seen UK pilots piss on the wheels of their Tridents before a hairy mission. I've seen the Russians piss on their ships before launch."

" _Not something the women do, I bet."_

"Except for the really wild ones like Jack."

" _God, Shepard, I'm not going to get that image out of my head anytime soon."_

"You deserve that. I'm guessing both practices go back a few hundred years. Russians joked about having their orbiting dogs piss on the first American satellite."

" _Er_ … _the way Boris said it, there was something else to it._ "

"I'll come down. Bring us out of FTL when you're ready."

 _Reverse Cone_

Tech Specialist Traynor was quite chatty as she, Sarah, Gabby, and Bethany deployed the ring-imaging Cherenkov detectors around _Normandy's_ nose. That was getting on Joker's nerves, but not as much as Shepard being rock-still.

" _Get inside, Service Chief."_

" _Oooh, rank already. Is that an order Lieutenant? We still have eight minutes."_

" _No, but Shepard's behind me and he's tapping his foot even though he isn't."_

" _Uh oh. Just tying the last one in now, sir."_

And indeed, three minutes later they re-entered the cargo bay. Traynor ran up to the cockpit.

"I think the lounge would provide a better view, Traynor."

"Not of what I want to see, sir. The RICH sensor maps echo to the engineering console one and the co-pilot's haptic console. Gabby grabbed the engineer's."

"Well, you have two minutes. What's so special about this thing?"

"Yes, Sir. Um. You know Cherenkov radiation is emitted as a shock wave appearing as a cone of light behind a charged particle going faster than light in the medium."

"Wow, that went trippingly off the tongue."

"Shut up, Joker. Sure, Traynor, a sonic boom for light, keep going."

"But in a uniform Minkowski vacuum no charged particle travels faster than light."

"Sure. Except for eezo cores in starships."

"They're in a _non-_ uniform Minkowski warp channel."

"Right. I get that. So?"

"So a bubble or solid asteroid can't stop every couple of days to discharge its core. The core discharges itself directly into the rock and iron, which is _mostly_ lost as corresponding electrons off the sides, as dust and ionized gas float past."

"Okay. These things are trailing huge clouds of electrons."

"The trailing end of the warp channel accumulates the bubble's core overflow, yes."

"And then? There's no medium for them to polarize."

"It's an extremely charged point in space, see? It'll _create_ its non-vacuum medium directly out of the vacuum, with virtual particle pairs, it doesn't matter if they go back to the vacuum substrate they'll still be there for long enough. _And it's superluminal_."

"Now there's a big word."

"It has five syllables, Joker, is that too much for you?"

"Traynor."

"Sorry, sir."

"No, you're not. So this thing produces a light cone?"

"Captain, I think it will make a _reverse_ light cone. Hey coming up on the mark…"

It was hard to be sure, but Shepard felt he saw a violet blink in the stars.

"…bloody hell."

"Traynor?"

"The spectral distribution is _insane_. It's a good thing this ship is armored, sir. Gamma rays. I wouldn't have wanted to be still outside."

"Which would mean… even its trail is a weapon."

"That hadn't occurred to me sir. I was thinking, the spectral distribution is unique."

"Then it's a beacon. Thank you, chief. Dismissed."

* * *

 _TBD_

"Slapdash".

The turian dockmaster looked sideways at General Vakarian.

"Sir, I know the build quality suffered from the rush priority. Given the schedule, I expect double the normal incidence of minor rework issues. But they will perform to spec. At least after shakedown."

There wasn't any obvious reaction at first from the general, who kept examining the uneven anodizing on the titanium skins. Eventually he gave a turian sigh and said:

"Not slapdash _you_ , dockmaster. Slapdash _me_. I really must get out of the habit of underestimating certain humans." The general shook himself, turned, and added: "About any problematic DD craft. Will they require time in the dock?"

"No, sir. The dock is automated and the large work is always completed to the same high standard. But some of the fitting out, like that anodizing, was done by civilian turian contractors and… much as it pains me to say it…"

"They can be as corrupt or slack as their human counterparts."

"I would not go _that_ far, general, but certainly their standards have been slipping under pressure. However, it's nothing we can't fix on shakedown."

"Except we will have to carry extra provision for on-board contract workers."

"Yes, sir."

The general nodded, a little absently. "I will accept this first batch then on behalf of the hierarchy. Not sure how the Alliance representatives feel about this."

Garrus turned to the two Alliance service acceptance personnel, ethnic UNAS and Russian marine bird colonels. They both nodded, but the Russian raised a finger:

"Dockmaster, the shakedown cruises will be low risk but they are real missions to pirate space. I insist that on-board rework or rectification be done by _military_ staff, either Alliance personnel or trained servicemen from the respective national militaries."

Lee Riley spoke up: "Kantarov, I've been training the rework teams myself. They are a mixture of turian and human staff who I've finally got working well together after six weeks. Some are civvies. Makes no sense splitting teams. Rectification will suffer."

"Nonetheless, Riley, those are my instructions from on high."

The UNAS colonel shrugged his shoulders. "I have no such instructions. Major Riley's teams are perfectly acceptable to me, and I accept the UNAS batch on those terms. Still. You want to train your own bodies, Kantarov, go right ahead."

"On that basis, then I too accept the batch for Russian crews. We will perform our own analysis."

* * *

 _T_ _he mad Russian_

Admiral Boris Mikhailovich put down Shepard's report: "You're certain of this."

"The sensor results are unambiguous, Admiral. The trail of a bubble-style weapon would be detectable across half the galaxy."

"But not till thirty thousand years after the event."

"That is so, sir, it only propagates at light speed."

"All the same, it's a good thing we're firing it from behind the fluff."

"I don't think that would matter, sir, the bubble's trailing radiation wouldn't be picked up at its target – the black hole? – until after it struck. My concern is that if we use these, we should be sure we don't care who _off to one side_ sees the trail."

"I see. Of course. We must make only sparing use of these weapons."

"This is one more reason to favor nuclear warheads in non-FTL bubbles, sir.

"Impactors dwarf nukes, Shepard."

"Yes, sir, but packing a kilometre-wide bubble full of five-stage Teller-Ulam nuclear bomb is quite severe enough. We'd stand off at a distance of some millions of kilometres. Access relays will have to be shielded or on the other side of a planet."

"I did see that report, too. Even at a conversion efficiency of only one tenth of one percent, that's seven hundred _billion_ megatons delivered in a second. But it's only around half a thousandth of the Sun's instantaneous power in vacuum, Shepard, inverse-square effects mean prompt radiation disperses really fast."

"With respect, sir, it creates cosmic rays and with clever design their distribution is quite collimated. Do refer to the final page of the report."

"… I see. And it's guided. You are proposing its use against _clusters_ of the enemy."

"There is one other aspect of impactor-style FTL weapons, sir. Did you see the report on the proposal by the turian general on _Peacemaker?_ "

"Yes, my God. A difficult person, this Vakarian." (Shepard had to suppress a belly-laugh.) "On his own initiative, proposing cutting the power to the core just before striking the target, just to produce an impulse rather than a heat weapon. That would have been a totally unacceptable violation of orders. Might cause collateral damage."

"That was my opinion also, sir."

"The same applies to the ordinary two-and-a-half tonne FTL missiles, which as you observe in your report should be treated as dreadnought slugs– they will ruin someone's day, somewhere, sometime if the energy appears as momentum."

"Thank you, Sir."

"Instruct this turian he should seek high command approval, first."

* * *

 _Turian patrol_

Riley helped the new tech chief stow her gear at a bunk rigged for human at the back of the med bay. "You've done this before, Maria. They expect you to be a corpsman?"

"Hardly. I think to the OOD it's just a convenient corner. On _North Cape_ I was tech CPO. When the DD flotilla leader arrived I went there, now here. Admiral says go, I go. Mama was a diplomat, I speak court turian."

"Good to know. You aware of those little DD ships then? Cheap variants of the SR-1 _Normandy._ There's no stealth capability – just a standard frigate's eezo core."

"Been aboard some. Met all the captains and comm crews on test batches of DD craft training as a flotilla. But the focus was procedures when autotranslation's down."

* * *

 _Home in time for tea_

Shepard took the shuttle down to his island. Two frigates hovering near the jetty felt like one too many, and the crew, even Joker, wanted to see their usual commander – Ashley Williams, still at school in Rio.

"There's _Overlord_ , sir. Where should I land?"

"Can you sneak under the big macrocarpa south of the jetty?"

"Er… yes, Shepard. No problem. What about high tide?"

"Not huge. I thought these things were rated to several thousand metres deep?"

"Only the piloting cell is unflooded in those tests, sir. Let's avoid testing it?"

"Fine. I'm sure we'll find it if it floats."

 _Autumnal Equinox_

Summer was shading into autumn and the marine climate had re-established itself. There was a wall of cloud to the north-west, but Cortez' best guess was that it would pass well clear of them, and a warm breeze blew.

Shepard spent a couple of minutes on the boat hawsers anyway, then made his way after his pilot into the house.

Kelly met him at the door with a kiss.

"Thank God you're back."

"Was school a bit dire?"

"I was missing a lot of sleep for a while."

She added that the house had been comparatively empty till they got there, for Oriana was in the maternity ward and everyone else away on business, so there was study _and_ Felicia, until Jack, Gianna, and Miranda took up the strain a bit.

"Mm. Sounds like a lot of stress. Maybe we can hire a local to help?"

"I thought about it, but the young people are working all the hours god sends and even the survivors among the old. They collapse in bed of an evening, except some of them also work nights."

Visibly true, despite the mechs. There was a labor shortage.

The influx of aliens didn't help much. Aliens didn't count as refugees, and the Indians especially didn't seem inclined to import old conflicts, but refugees were _very_ closely vetted, especially since the rural Maori were, post-Reapers, a _much_ larger proportion of the population. Only the Aussies, the Russians, and the rather substantial number of displaced UNAS families, adapted well to the farm and factory life needed right now. Having freehold title helped.

It all meant they were stuck with the help they had.

Under the circumstances Kelly was pleased to have both Miranda, Maeko, and occasionally Gianna around the (slightly larger, now) house. Even Toombs, especially when there was sport on the video screen.

"All the same, we have to have a plan."

"That will be hard. But I passed physiology! Let's just destress a few minutes."

The place did in fact feel warmer and lived-in. Video streaming was going. A Russell technician had paid a visit and installed a Satellite Earth maser waveguide, so they had proper extranet, and Citadel programming, especially news, as alternatives to the ghastly local and parochial Earth fare.

Astonishingly, Miranda Lawson was feeding Felicia some soft concoction, painstakingly. More wound up on Miranda than inside Felicia.

"Wow," he remarked in their bedroom, _sotto voce_.

"She's getting better at it."

"It's like Johnson's woman preacher. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

"Said the man who fed Felicia for two days when I was sick."

"Well, okay, there was stuff in my _hair_. All the same, how did you manage this?"

"Actually, she offered."

"Wonders will never cease."

"She said she'll need the practice when Oriana pops. Tomorrow, they think. I got in touch with your Mom and she's on her way back."

"Oh boy. Oriana's newborn can't go off in a fighting frigate. We have to talk about this."

"Yes. We do. Come with me, would you?"

* * *

 _Next chapter: #98, "Summum Bonum"_

* * *

Friday, September 4, 2015


	15. Summum bonum

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 98 **Summum Bonum**

* * *

 _Rich or Poor man's wife_

Following the initial incandescent outburst (which made Miranda, who was listening for it a hundred metres off, twitch) Shepard put the palms of his hands over his head. After all, the only person around for him to hit was his girl. One of them. The love of his life, dammit. Or one of them. He balled a fist and made to strike the macrocarpa bark, but she took it and covered it with both her hands.

" _Jesus!_ "  
"You don't remember?"  
"It must have been somewhere around Noveria. That's… I don't really understand how it was done… but–"  
"Was there a time when they were both there?"  
"Actually…Yes. Within coo-ee, as they put it. But that… when I woke up it was definitely Miranda."  
"I'm sure it was."

Shepard winced, sighed:

"Look, I'm sorry–"  
"Don't be." Kelly released his unclenching fist. "Some complication was always on the cards. Miranda found you well before me, after all. But that Oriana would… no, I should have anticipated that. Oh God, I've messed up."  
" _I_ messed up. Even if you could see this coming. Did you?"

Kelly paused, then: "No. Not absolutely. There _were_ omens. Not least, Miranda might be dead by now had you not watched over her. But none of this was inevitable. I just _felt_ you would go back to her. Perhaps should. Beautiful, clever, perfect, talented–"

"Evil," Shepard interjected. "Maybe dead would have been for the best."

Now Kelly looked at Shepard, disbelieving: "Like Henry? You really think so?" Then folding her arms, with a calculating expression:  
"No, you don't, do you?"  
"…No. Dammit. Miranda's moral compass aligns to another axis. But going back to her? How could you think that of me?"

Now it was Kelly's turn to crease her face. Tears sprang despite her best efforts:

"Also, Lawsons are rich."  
"So you're not wealthy, dear me how sad. I'm still looking at a beautiful, clever, talented person, right now."  
"Hardly perfect, though."  
"True. You give me such grief, woman!"  
"I mean, I'm not brave, Shepard. Not like Miranda, anyway."  
"And yet the idea of losing you scares me crapless in a way Miranda never did."  
"I had _nothing_ …"  
"You had _me_ ," -countered Shepard stoutly. _This is hard work_.

Kelly couldn't help shaking her head, as she emitted a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sniffle, then continued:

"…except an unwanted pregnancy."  
"Not unwanted."  
"Shepard, I'm trying to be reasonable here. What could _I_ possibly offer _you_?"

 _After all this, if she doesn't know, words alone won't tell her_ … then one last word to say came unbidden, and Shepard gripped her shoulders:

"You."

* * *

 _R_ _ace condition_

For the first few days of the squadron's patrol-cum-supply-drop along the Exodus chain, each relay transit was occasion for flotilla evolutions.

Today Garrus was lecturing again. As many bilingual personnel as possible had to be up to speed on combat operations, because simulated combat conditions included dropping the autotranslator net. He spread little markers in the bank and bell sim:

"We, the DDs, and the freighters come up to the relay, power up the relay jump gate;"

FF D¹² SR2→ °|°+++++++++^^^+++++++++++++++*+++++|

"Exit 'scram' maneuvres are intended to spread the targets each ship presents. What we want, Riley, is to make the most crucial targets unappealing or invulnerable."

Poor Lee Riley accepted the duty, though rolling her eyes; N7 engineer, not tactics officer. _Vakarian isn't career navy either, so why the zeal?_ But then Riley realized: _Zeal_ would be by direction of the Primarch. The _duty_ came from Garrus' flag rank.

"The _least_ vulnerable targets go first into harm's way. Whatever danger sits on the far side of the gate is allowed a bite of something less valuable or less vulnerable."

"Right, sir. I see. Yet our craft, _Peacemaker,_ is by far the most valuable single ship. Even so, _Peacemaker_ always goes through first, I've noticed."

FF D¹² → °|°+++++++++^^^++++SR2+++++++++*+++++|

"An SR-2 is valuable, Riley. But _not_ vulnerable, so long as it's the first through."

Actually, Riley felt _Peacemaker_ in principle might be vulnerable on wormhole exit, but perhaps not, given stealth engaged and the tiny conduit relays being hard to spot.

"I see. No-one knows we're there so long as we don't ping them, and _we_ can quickly warn the flotilla leader by QEC of whatever's on the other side of the relay wormhole."

"Exactly! That is not, unfortunately true of the two minifreighters we are escorting, none of them are QEC-equipped yet, so those go through last. And each carries two companies of marines to repel pirate boarders. As for the destroyers…"

 _Ah. The interesting bit._ In Riley's experience, heavy SR-2 frigates would exit wormhole relays individually. The _much_ lighter DD craft based on the old SR-1 template could transit the newer generations of conduit relays by 'sections' of three.

FF D³ D³ D³ → °|°++++D³→++^^^++++SR2++++++++*+++++|

"The flotilla leader takes the first section of three through; they scatter at 120° angles – to twelve, four and eight o'clock. Tell me why, Lee."

"Er… a single enemy can't engage them all at once? But hang on… they'd give the first inkling we're in-system. Do _we_ ping the system with the Argus array at that point?"

"Not 20AU out-system. That would only wake any defenders up. Actually a wake-up call might be indicated, but let's assume we don't want that. What happens next, Lee?"

* * *

 _W_ _aiting, to re-arrange_

At length, Shepard sighed a terrible gasping sigh:

"I've been serving and fighting all my life, getting good at a very peculiar kind of duty, but I'm _tired_. All I want is to live, and love, and watch you live, and Felicia grow, far away from any kind of battle. With mom, and our friends, on an island–"

"Maybe we can."

"– _How?_ "

"I'm still working on it."

"I can't trust her anymore. Or Oriana."

"Maybe possibly you can. In a way. In some things. Important things."

"How do you work that out?"

"She did tell me the father, John. Remember that."

"Is that enough?"

"Do you trust _me_?"

"Yes!"

"Then it's enough."

"What do I say to Miranda? To Oriana?"

"Will you leave that to me? Please? For now?"

 _Schoolgirls dating_

He stood with Kelly outside the ward door. They could see Oriana being prepped, propped in bed, her eyes closed and a little pasty, getting ready for theater.

"She looks rather different with all the goth makeup gone."

"She does." Distressingly, heartrendingly, exactly like a very young and vulnerable Miranda. This was a perverse universe. "How can I stay angry at that?"

Kelly looked up, and entwined her fingers in his. "Just be yourself. "

He looked down and met her green eyes. "I can't help not being angry."

"Good. She might be better for you than me or Miranda, you know."

"I think not. But I notice she never had to grow Miranda's hard shell."

"Not yet. This might start one."

* * *

 _Rogue dungeon_

"I suppose it depends on what _Peacemaker_ can see _without_ scanning."

"Yes. Usually, that's nothing. By default, until first three ships converge on the point of interest, someone might takes a potshot. But only one bait gets caught by surprise."

FF → °|°++++D¹¹→++^) **D** (^^++++←SR2+++++++++*+++++|

"And the rest of them? What happens when the remaining sections come through?"

"They run for the objective or battle. Freighters wait up to twenty minutes. Meanwhile…"

"We scan?"

"Nearly there, Riley. We jump to within scan range of the objective, then wait a bit. Once core's up to charge and spun, ping _once_ and jump back, resuming stealth–"

FF → °|°++++++++++++++D¹²→+++←SR2+++)+++ *^^^ ++|

"–and if there's enemies, they're floundering in the dark. Gotcha."

"If it all turns to custard, we hope we're faster. At least one ship – not necessarily us – will return through the relay to warn the rest off. Last one through before the enemy, turns off the relay – or sabotages it:"

FF D¹² ←SR2 °^°←A←Z++++++++++++++++++++++++++*++++++|

"Ah. Otherwise, if all goes to plan, the destroyers proceed until someone notices them? The freighters come last, we shadow them?"

°|°+++++FF→+SR2→++++D¹²→++++++++++++*+++++|

"Close enough. They all take up station at stand-off distance, which usually means orbit if the objective is a planet. _Then_ we ping again. Then dock and unload."

"Okay. Got that, I think. But Garrus, I don't remember reading this in Shepard's Fighting Frigate Manual."

"Shepard's Blue Gospel is for singleton frigates. In all his time on the _Normandy_ , Shep never had to run a flotilla escort into danger. But if you look more closely, the kernel of these ideas is actually in Hannah Shepard's footnotes."

"Oh. She _did_ have escort experience."

"Exactly. The idea, Riley, is to make the most crucial targets unappealing, and put the least vulnerable targets in the way of whatever danger sits on the far side."

"Fine. Now, not that I'm complaining, but why have _I_ had to sit through all this?"

 _S_ _trategoi_

Garrus laughed incredulously.

"You surely don't expect Kozlo to grasp this at one sitting and relay turian orders?"

"He'd get it, eventually, but – no. I'm not talking about him or me."

"Lee Riley, you and he are our liaison officers, my only bilingual personnel except for one turian cabal who knows this stuff already."

Riley raised a stern finger: "Er… Garrus, I don't know how to break this to you – but that supernumerary kid in the med bay, who transferred from the flotilla leader?"

"M. I. Orlova. What of her? You're telling me she speaks court turian? How well?"

"Better than me. I thought you knew? Didn't you sign off on the crew roster?"

"No, the officer of the day does that, but I check anyway. That person's berth came by direction of the Primarch – like you. A human medic, no? Just the thing for mixed crew. If a salarian mad scientist was good enough for Shepard I'm not saying no to a competent human one. But she surely doesn't need to know the tac plan!"

"She _does_. She's no medic, Garrus, just back of med bay to make room elsewhere."

"What _is_ her duty station, then?"

"She's your mixed-ops comm tech. Signals officer, ex _North Cape's_ comm board."

" _Spirits._ She'll be dictating evolutions to the Captain (D) from her rostered comm station. You're right. I hope we can get her up to speed in time. _"_

"Garrus, she _invented_ the tactical pidgin. Wanna guess who she reminds me of?"

* * *

 _Conduit_

The Alliance cruiser's captain was looking forward to finishing silent running as he toggled the internal power and pulled away from the new relay by jet pack.

Once back at the CIC, he checked the mission clock. _Two minutes._ The new X-25 relay was on a moon of the outermost planet, 24 AU from the G0 star, still two thousand light years from Utopia. There should have been an industrial outpost here and indeed there was some radio noise – but not in any Earth language he knew. _Bad sign._

In principle the cruiser could now pull away by FTL back to the fabrication dreadnought, but no-one on the crew relished going back in to cold sleep and anyway they had overwatch orders for the first probe. If all went well they'd be evacuated down the chain for leave, the cruiser mothballed till the next push.

 _It's time._ The crew clustered around the viewports. Some swore they saw a shimmer in the stellar background within thirty seconds of power-up. Others scoffed.

* * *

 _A_ _great big welcome_

Oriana ached more with every labor spasm. Doctor Chloe wanted to give her more pain relief but she resisted, sure Miranda would arrive. Finally, with relentless persistence, Chloe and Kahlee managed to convince her that this huge little boy really ought to be delivered with epidural pain assistance, which shouldn't knock her out.

"Where's Miranda?"

"I'm not sure, sweetheart. She's around but not answering her omni-tool."

"My sister would be here. She was supposed to be awake for this. Kahlee, please!"

"She's still at the island, Oriana. You do understand she's not coming? You said not to bother, remember?"

"No!"

"I distinctly remember hearing that."

"I didn't mean it!"

She protested in vain. There was no-one else in sight. But then there was.

"Kelly? Where's Miri?"

"She sent us, Oriana."

"Who's us? _John_ _?_ "

Shepard noted absently that sweat was appearing all over her face. Michel did something on a console, and sponged her forehead. Silently, he took her flailing hand.

"… Oh. I see."

"Miranda said she couldn't come. We could," said Chambers, matter-of-factly.

"I'm sorry."

There was a lot packed in those two words. Some impulse made Shepard lean over and kiss her forehead. Oriana closed her eyes briefly.

"We'll work something out."

Shepard glanced over at Chambers, somehow radiating approval. She came closer by, but her omni-tool bleeped, even as Oriana desperately renewed her plea:

"I want my sister. Kahlee? Someone?"

"John, Hannah's at the island. Miranda can't cope. I'll handle this."

– whereupon Kelly left, rather precipitately. Before she left the outer doors he heard her calling Cortez. The bustling rustle of Michel's staff half-obscured Oriana's whisper:

" _John, stay? Please?_ _He's coming. I can feel him coming._ "

" _Cortez_ is coming first. She'll be here in time, or he's not the pilot I think he is."

 _S_ _tille Nacht_

Garrus was trying to split his attention between the data overlaying the galaxy map and Maria's murmuring to the DD captains waiting to enter the relay on his word. There was definitely radio traffic, but terse, sparse and mostly in some krogan dialect with occasional turian voices. Human voices rare. And the content – where it could be made out – was chilling. He sighed.

" _Yes, Captain. Bad guys."_

"Analysis, Tarquin?"

" _Two frigates, one light cruiser in dock. Of the eight outpost population centres six have been raided for supplies already and the other two are about to be attacked."_

"Spirits. No time to lose. Expedite, case orange. FTL jump at discretion, Tarquin, I want a ping straight after the first section is spotted by the enemy, and immediate return to cover the trooper frigates."

 _S_ _tarburst_

The cruiser crew's patience was rewarded when the first section jumped through the relay wormhole with bright, bright Helium-3 thrusters at full throttle, and immediately broke in a starburst trisymmetric dispersion maneuvre. The captain was pleased to receive a tight-beam UV laser communication from the "Captain (D)", the flotilla leader, congratulating him on precise timing in a clipped Russian accent.

Two minutes later those thruster lights went out; the little frigates jumped in-system.

 _Sti_ _gmata_

Gil Robbens was not a bad man. He told himself that every evening before bed. But the Skyllian Blitz had hardened him to 'necessary evil' – what was supposed to be an easy bit of larceny ripping off the corporate colonists on Elysium had turned out to be a bloodbath, and then worse when the Alliance fleet arrived. So he _liked_ taking out his frustrations on colonists.

But today he had dumped the body of one recalcitrant colonist in the river. Turned out to be a mother who'd finally snapped when the last _laevo_ rations in the house were sent to Captain Hailot's frigate. He'd had to disable the Paw who came at him with a shovel. And he'd winged the daughter because she was making _so_ much _noise_.

Robbens just wanted a quiet life. Now he was even having trouble sleeping. Worse, that damned turian sergeant was kicking him back to the ship for irritating the locals ( _"It's easier to skin a varren when it's comatose, dolt. Don't wake the slaves."_ )

So Gil was pissed off with everyone, even himself, kicking pebbles down the road to the frigate. Until the five-minute klaxon went and he _ran_.

 _S_ _ystem shock and awe_

Gil just made it into the hull before close-up began and headed for his gun station near the cockpit. In passing he'd heard the CIC chief announce to Haliot that _"three frigates shot past Andros' picket-duty corvette like it was standing still."_ He could still hear the captain was trying to get details from the picket but all that came back was _"Estimate atmospheric arrival in three minutes"_ – and then, static. The navigator, a turian, looked back from the threat map to the captain in shock:

" _Boss,_ _something stealthed_ _took the corvette out with –_ _it had_ _to be Thanix cannon!"_

Haliot kept his nerve. "We lift NOW," toggled comm to the engine room and demanded "I don't care where we lift but get my ship off the ground!" The next forty seconds were bedlam. All Gil's friends were making noises he'd previously only heard from victims.

Still, Haliot got off another series of orders including general alarm for ground forces to man the redoubt and remaining troops to mount up on whatever mobile armour was still functional in this planet's crappy (Mediterranean, moist) climate.

It all worked, sort of. At least, the frigate actually lifted off.

But then there was a searing white blast which stunned all Gil Robbens' senses. When he came to, the frigate lay crumpled over the old conveyor factory, and its shattered hull allowed him to walk straight out into the town square. Again, he _ran_.

* * *

 _God will know his own_

There wasn't room for finesse here. The frigates had to drop commandos on the outskirts of town because most of the once-mercenary pirates actually retained vestiges of military discipline and were smart enough to get heavy weapons ranged on structures within the town. But they were broadcasting a demand to let them leave or they'd execute hostages. Romanov was Captain (D) and not supposed to risk himself in this manner but this could end very badly unless the crisis was nipped in the bud NOW. He charged with all his marines – only two squads – towards the redoubt while his pilot and gunners began reducing the pillbox and hardened positions. Concrete and steel flew, white-hot metal beams sliced and the environment was hazardous to health, but they all made it to within fifty metres of the redoubt main entrance when the other two frigates in his section slammed to within four hundred metres, hovered three seconds and _both_ vessels unleashed thanix fire on the main armoured door at once.

" _Cover!"_ screamed Romanov, and they all hit the dirt. Then the dirt hit them back. The shriek of stressed stone and metal still echoed when Romanov got up again and charged for the door, engaging shields. God only knew how many were still alive in there but seventy hostages might be depending on him. None of the mercs still stirring at first made any attempt to stop him – their shock was total. As the squads penetrated further underground, resistance grew, but sheer speed brought him to the last bulkhead unharmed. "Breaching charges!"

* * *

 _Tagmata_

The leading squad sergeant later described the tableau before them as _'like something out of Fleet and Flotilla'_ except that the turian holding a gun on the quarian was the bad guy. No-one ever worked out why he'd singled out the quarian as the first victim, because a millisecond after he'd turned and snarled, (in English!) _'Back off'_ –the captain shot the bird straight through his unarmored visor.

And that, really, was that. The five others, mixed human and seedy turian, threw down their arms and knelt with their hands on their heads. Didn't look to do them any good. Seventy-odd hostages rose as one and tore the nearest to pieces. _Stop!_ –screamed his captain, to no effect, then: _FREEZE OR DIE_. In Russian. They didn't understand, or if they did, didn't care.

Two of the hostages died on the spot, spattered against the wall, before the rest turned. For a half second the sergeant thought he'd be lynched by those they came to rescue. But the thunderous look on the captain's face must have counted for something.

And then they heard shouting and gunfire. The remaining pirates were coming for the hostages, who all scrambled screaming back against the far wall, revenge forgotten. Both squads posted two fire teams with armor either side of the door then set up cross-fire from twenty metres back with squad automatic weapons. Six pirates died screaming the instant they entered, the others fell back and threw grenades – but the guys by the door had rolled away, anticipating that. Then more noise outside – something _big_ landing. A scream of thruster helium jets made the occasional _pop-pop_ of assault weapons barely audible, but then the engine racket died; other noises could be heard.

 _God, there's so much fire out there!_

The sergeant stole a look at his captain. _The freighters have arrived_ , Romanov said. That meant Makos and five hundred troops! It was getting really noisy. Lots of _booom_. At length, the bigger noises tailed off. People calmed down. Staff from the flotilla walked in, including Maria, who'd transferred to _Peacemaker_. Good news. In short order, Maria and General Vakarian had sorted the prisoners into several groups from grunts to people of actual intelligence (rare) to those of actual intelligence value (rarer). After a while Romanov was left in charge, with Maria of course talking nineteen to the dozen in English, turian, Russian, and even at least one Batarian dialect. After twenty minutes most hostages had gone to the local clinic, being restocked from flotilla supplies; prisoners were filed through to the freighter brigs.

That was when someone called ' _Gil_ _'_ was spotted trying to merge with the townsfolk. Once again, nothing could keep the townies from rushing the pirate. Gil ran behind Maria, who stepped forward, raising a hand; for a moment the sergeant thought the townies would stop, but two of them ran forward with knives, _He killed our mom!_

Maria looked shocked, half-turned; the fool grabbed her, smashed a gun over her head, and announced _"I'm leaving–"  
_ –as indeed he was, because Romanov shot his scalp off.

* * *

 _L_ _augh or cry_

Hannah had passed through anger and was out the other side, a good trick Shepard wished he could master. Before that happened though, Miranda had taken the brunt of her displeasure. Shepard didn't know what words had passed between them, but she now sat, white as a ghost, at the far end of the lounge in what was fast becoming a self-imposed exile, when _Overlord_ wasn't out delivering sensitive machinery to Benning.

It actually hurt to watch. Shepard didn't understand himself at all, he found himself wanting to take her off to the far end of the island and sit under the macrocarpa till she got a bit of color back. But Kelly caught his eye and shook her head, just a minuscule gesture, but unmistakable.

Miri couldn't go too far, though. Oriana would became upset. If there was one thing all were determined on, it was that Oriana shouldn't be allowed to get upset. Hence the air of fragile civility which reigned in the little island world, except for the wail of the newborn. At least there was now some accumulated expertise for dealing with _that_.

Even when back from freight missions, the tension under the surface meant Shepard didn't have to listen to anyone telling him that the baby had his eyes (it did) or his ears (Shepard couldn't see the resemblance), whatever whispers they were exchanging among themselves.

He was beginning to spend his free time on the bench under the macrocarpa, except when Steve ordered him into the shuttle and they spent half the afternoon on mainland hill crests, watching clouds chase each other over the sea.

They didn't need to fill the silence with words.

* * *

 _Double-action_

Five hours post-action, Garrus gave the order to quit the system, except for one freighter which would stay and garrison the colony till regular timetabled service runs could be made from Arcturus and Benning.

Most of the wounded and dead were being dealt with by the colonists. Sometimes that meant careful coffining and services before burial. Sometimes it meant the body fed the fishes with little ceremony.

But one wounded soul bothered him. The comm officer who'd done such a sterling job with organizing relief efforts had a welt on her forehead where she'd been gun-whipped by that idiot pirate. Had Garrus been there he didn't think he could have bettered Captain (D)'s resolution of the situation, but he hadn't been there and felt a little guilty about it.

She still looked a little stunned. And actually it was no small blow to the head, though medics felt it would mend. Her hands were shaking. _All_ of her was shaking.

This wasn't something turians could help much with. Garrus went in search of Romanov, who heard Garrus' description, muttered under his breath, and ran back into _Peacemaker_. Garrus followed and found them several minutes later talking very, very quietly in the med bay. His medic raised a hand, _leave them to it a moment general._ Quarter of an hour later at the end of the watch, the Captain (D) came up and formally requested Maria's transfer back to the flotilla leader.

Garrus frowned. _Romanov, I'm not sure we can do without her in a battle._ But the Captain (D) pleaded: _General, the battle's done. Have you no-one else?_ And he did have Lee Riley. So Maria went back to her Russian comrades, looking a little more animated.

He would have to have a word with Chambers about this. But there was no time: orders were being cut for the Nest chain.

* * *

 _Terrible rap of the_ _thunderclap._

Tension on the island broke three weeks later, of an autumn afternoon, when both frigates had converged on Russell for the final scheduled reconnaissance down the N-chain.

The lounge door opened and Matthews, of all people, _ran_ in, with a note from _Overlord's_ duty commo officer:

"Priority, ma'am. Hawthorne says there's a Saber Three flash from Boss Boris: _'T_ _he stealth sensors launched from N-18 to the galactic north above the black hole have picked up increased gravity wave perturbations._ _'_ Admiral, something is slowly exiting the hole. Estimate three days to surface through the static limit."

Miranda, Hannah, and Shepard exchanged glances. A buster run to N-18 would take two days. Hannah nodded. "Acknowledged, chief. Notify the OODs, leave is canceled, general recall to duty."

Matthews threw a quick salute, ran off – a gross violation of protocol; no-one cared.

 _Personal Personnel_

The captains of the boats stood together, a little apart from the small group of spectators from the house, hands behind their back, as the Officers of the Deck counted the personnel aboard.

Ferry shuttles disgorged crew from Russell-based shore leave, and from orbit, in some cases from the Citadel. In the end, Shepard's OOD – Cortez – came and reported _"All present and accounted for."_

Miranda was not so fortunate. Hadley rather glumly reported that not only had they no permanent comm officer – Goldstein's old position still had no appointee – but, Sanders and Dr Jana had been called away. By Hackett, no less.

Shepard nodded. He'd been copied the briefing. They'd gone from the Citadel to Arcturus, in order to testify before Alliance brass on the expansion of AIs from frigates to destroyers – a much cheaper class of ships with the same monococque frame but only a standard eezo core, armed with FTL torpedoes.

Miranda and Shepard looked at each other. Her eyes seemed to hold the same flinty blue gaze he recalled from Minuteman station and the early days with Cerberus, but the evening cast a gray wash over the world, it was hard to tell. She noted calmly:

"This means _Overlord_ has no medic."

"They have you, and Zabaleta. Traynor!"

Samantha came running over.

"You're assigned forthwith as comm officer and liaison to Miranda on _Overlord_ , for this mission. They have no-one else up to speed. I need someone I trust as liaison." Miranda winced. Traynor blinked.

"Sir, who will _you_ have?"

"I'll have Kelly and Gabby if necessary. Possibly what's his name, Alexei."

"Good choice, sir, he's technically up to speed, but he's an enlisted man."

"Even so. Perform the duty hand-over, and report to _Overlord_."

"That will have to do, I guess," sighed Miranda.

Shepard looked in her eyes a long moment. No-one was asking forgiveness for anything. Things were was they were; there was no point. Still…

"No medic is not good for the efficiency of operations. _Wiks. Kirrahe._ Front and center, please."

The Salarians had only just gone in _Normandy's_ loading bay. They picked up their duffels, walked back down the _Normandy's_ ramp, and saluted.

"I'm seconding both of you to _Overlord_ for this mission. Wiks, you now have extensive experience of human physiology, you are the medic. Kirrahe, you and Wiks understand each other. I expect you to assist and protect Wiks. Clear?"

"Yes, Shepard."

"Very well. Ms Lawson is of course your commanding officer _pro tempore_. Lawson."  
–Shepard gestured an open hand at the salarians. _They're yours. Take them._

Miranda nodded, "I'll see you both shortly, gentlemen. Transit stations on _Overlord_ , if you will." They saluted, and left. Miranda turned to Shepard again.

"Now _you_ have no medic."

"I have Brevet Lieutenant Chambers."

" _No!"_ Both captains cast an astonished glance at Chakwas' bitter protest.

"She's only a student!"

"She's a fully qualified nurse. It will have to do. I'm assigning Kelly Chambers, RN, to the med bay."

"It will _not_ have to do. I'm coming!"

" _You've_ retired from active service, Karin. You've done enough."

"You. _You_ stand there and tell _me_ I've done enough!"

Shepard winced. She had a point. For him it was, might well be, third time unlucky. Not that he wasn't grimly determined to rise above this, and to see Kelly did too.

"I haven't." Michel stepped forward. But: "No way, Chloe." Miranda shook her head firmly. "You and I are the only ones who know the Lazarus manual inside and out."

"Karin's up to date with our briefing papers. So is Wiks."

"You've performed by far the majority of procedures. I'm sorry, Chloe, but one of us has to survive this. You're staying."

" _Ahem_." Shepard, along with everyone else, including Oriana's never-sufficiently-to-be-damned VI-driven camera, turned to look at Hannah.

"Karin, catch." She tossed a set of dog tags. "You're officially reinstated. Your commanding officer is Captain Shepard there."

"Acknowledged, ma'am." And Karin Chakwas stalked stiffly up to her captain, saluted, and declared: "I believe I know my duty station, Captain."

Shepard just gave a resigned nod, returning the salute. Turned to Miranda.

" _We must go down to the dark in ships."  
"And work our profession in the great starry sea."_

This little call-and-response over, they exchanged an Alliance salute, and ascended their respective ramps.

* * *

 _Next chapter: #99, "The End of the Golden Weather"_

* * *

Saturday, September 5, 2015


	16. The End of the Golden Weather

Way of life, Arc 7 of "Gone with the Sun"

Chapter 99 **The End of the Golden Weather**

* * *

 _S_ _trobe lights gleam_

In the last of the light, towards the end of second dog, the loading bay door of _Normandy_ lifted shut, blocking out Hannah's final view of her son, holding the hand of his yeoman, waving as they strained for one last glimpse of the children.

Thrusters lit; first _Overlord_ then _Normandy_ rose slowly, pivoted to the north-east, and accelerated into the gathering black wall of cloud. Bad weather coming; Hannah could hear grumbling booms which weren't supersonic.

Those great, gray ships had slipped away. The port and starboard navigation lights strobed for a few seconds into the dark, then were gone. Hannah looked up so long as she could hear the shocked atoms of the atmosphere close around the ships' departure. Then she bent her head a little, as Oriana tentatively put a hand on her shoulder.

Michel saw each was holding a child close to their chest: tiny flecks of rain were beginning to fly, and the wind was coming up. They leaned against each other, and into the wind, on the way back into the house.

 _CinC_

"Status, Captain?" Hackett's holographic image in the war room looked grim.

"Under way, sir, with _Overlord_. Manning levels nominal in both ships."

"Good. I understand _North Cape_ is already on hand at N-16 and _Peacemaker_ is about to arrive."

"Sir, if you could advise them I'd like a fighting pair with a parasitic fighter to poke their noses out of N-18, fully stealthed. We need a diversion or at least a delay."

"I'll let Boris know, Captain, and get them to play tag. Hackett out. No, belay that: Your manifest shows a Lieutenant Kelly Chambers on board."

"Assisting Chakwas in Med Bay, sir. And introducing PFC Alexei Maksutov to the idiosyncrasies of _Normandy's_ comm board. It's not a good look, I know."

"Mustn't have a Serviceman second Class working a stealth frigate's comm board."

"He's the best I've got except Kelly, she's going to be needed by Chakwas come triage time, and I can't stop to pick up any of Tali, Kahlee or Jana from Arcturus."

"Brevet him to Service Chief. Tali's doing maintenance on N-8, pick her up there."

"Okay, but she'll need training too. That's two ranks for the enlisted man, sir."

"It's only a brevet rank, and he's a line trooper, we'll see what staff rank he keeps afterwards. Tell him the _Rodina_ expects every man to do his duty, or whatever works. And what's happened down there with Hannah? I hear she cut short her Citadel tour."

"Sir, we need to brief you in person about that."

* * *

 _Safe as houses_

They had been so long outside during crew muster that darkness had crept over the sky almost without people noticing. Now, everyone was gone except Chloe, Hannah, Oriana, and of course babies.

"Place is going to be a lot quieter now," remarked Hannah.

Making a liar of her, a tin can-style ration pack tinkled over the steps, pushed by an increasing wind, as they came up to the access port. Chloe tossed it into the recycler.

"Can I stay?"

"I think you'd better, Chloe, it's not a good time to go back by boat and all the aircars are hired, swooshing around the sky. But if you need to get back, I can pull rank and get you a shuttle."

"Please don't. I'll tell Graff to cover for me."

The house was of course dark till they began preparing a late meal, fed the children, and settled down in the lounge to see if anything abnormal was being broadcast. The extranet was quiet, that is to say, noisy with the usual trivial emergencies.

Oriana began channel-surfing for broadcast news.

* * *

 _On the edge of the light_

At the S-1 relay the frigates had to wait nearly twenty minutes. There was priority traffic heading out to Arcturus. John spent the interval in a brief update with Miranda on plans, including kidnapping Tali from N-8.

After half an hour, _Overlord_ and _Normandy_ made their way down the N-chain.

* * *

 _What's in a name?_

"One thing, girl."

"What? Sorry, Admiral?"

"Don't call me that, you're a civilian. But would you please get around to deciding on a name for my grandson?"

Oriana sat back, leaving the vid on ANN, and sighed. "I listed him on the hospital records as John – just couldn't think of anything better at the time. I _was_ hoping to talk to his Dad about that. Guess that's not going to happen, for a while."

"That's good, it's the traditional way. Where I come from, that is. I'd appreciate John as a name."

"But people'd call him John-John! Or JJ. No-one would take him seriously."

"Good, maybe he'd be less of a target. He's not going to be John Shepard. He'll be John Lawson, until Kelly and I work some sort of magic. Actually, he's born here, so he could be either. It's not like UNAS."

"Truly? How is it different?"

"He doesn't have to pick a family name, yet. Look at the new-format birth certificate. Nothing to stop him being a brother to Felicia."

"Wait…" Oriana got up and went in search of her document repository. Chloe brushed past going the other way, bringing coffee: "The place applied to join Oz pursuant to the preamble to the 1901 constitution – better that than having the Indonesians fill the void. So far, all the laws are up for renegotiation except for the bedrock common law."

"Exactly. It's trying to hang on to something of the past despite the survivors being outnumbered by Russian and Asian immigrants."

Oriana had found the digital ink certifying baby John's identity: "How does that affect his name?"

"Do you see an entry for 'surname' there?"

"No. Only first names, the names of the mother and the father, genomic hash…"

"Correct. There's been a massive simplification, they don't have the population to keep much of the arcane legislation from when the place had many millions. And a lot of kids don't have _any_ family. No mom, no pop. John's lucky."

"So he has two family names…"

"Right. For the time being the old authorities hold."

"… and no surname?

"I got EDI to look it up. The new amateur judges have gone back to Halsbury's Laws of England, no less."

Chloe chimed in here: 'Surname' is just a middle French word borrowed by legal English. _Surnom_ means 'nickname', not family name."

"Exactly, little John can change his surname any time, for any reason, or no reason."

"What about his first names? What used to be called Christian names?"

"They can't be changed except by public declaration or deed poll. Tradition again."

"So John could be a Shepard, later?"

"Any time he wants."

"And Kelly can stay Kelly Chambers?"

"She hasn't married him, anyway. Yet. So you might. Even if she had, a married woman only gained her husband's name 'by repute'. As far as the law is concerned only the first names are real, the surname is a matter of private negotiation and reputation."

"That's a crazy system."

"It lasted for hundreds of years and it's making a comeback."

* * *

 _Anything can happen in the next half parsec_

Real news drama was limited to coverage of the UNAS Presidential election, with the incumbent – formerly the Veep – predicted to win by a wide margin.

For the first time in weeks, the knot in Oriana's stomach began to untie itself.

"This beats spending the night in a panicking city, with kids. But I should be there."

"Don't sweat it, Oriana. Nobody knows what's coming yet. Take a break."

"Maybe. But I saw Allers at the back of the _Normandy_ loading bay. I wanna."

"You made a different choice, sweets," observed Chloe. "Thank god. Don't worry, there won't be any panic, with only Allers and Jilani on the authorized media list."

Oriana sighed. "I want to be with little John _and_ big John too. I'm torn, Chloe."

"Sweetie, with Reapers coming, you want to meet the end of the world _here_."

Hannah's nerves had been tested by the last few weeks. "Forget about Reapers."

"I suppose, worst case scenario, it'll take them a year to FTL here." Oriana looked pensive. "A lot can happen in a year."

Chloe laughed: "Yep. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die. And, who knows? Maybe the horse will sing – and _you_ will cover the home front."

Oriana's shocked response: "Are you nuts?" Hannah shook her head at both:

"My son's on the Reapers' case, and he's in a _bad_ mood."

* * *

 _Delayed beam_

In the _Normandy_ cockpit Shepard found Joker and EDI arguing over the priority flash. Moreau couldn't follow the timing.

"So how did we stuff up? They must have spotted _something_ , right, to be coming out now?"

"Not necessarily, Jeff. Over two billion years is a long life for any sapient construct; Legion hinted that's the origin of the many minds in any one reaper. It's entirely possible that even with QEC communications, they've only just begun to react." Shepard, having been briefed, nodded in agreement:

"Extrapolating from rampancy calculations for AIs, Kahlee thinks they'd be motivated to ensure at least their computational focus was under extreme time dilation, which slows the hydrogen system clock."

"On top of that, breaking a close orbit around the event horizon would itself impose a long delay. You _know_ this, Jeff. Work out the energy budget for a dreadnought, that will give you some idea, but the spacetime distortions make it worse."

"No stable orbit within three radii of a Schwartzchild-metric black hole, right?"

"Well done, Jeff, but the situation for this one, which is a Kerr-metric massive object, isn't so clear. Station-keeping energy can be obtained from the ergosphere."

"It must still be technically very hard to avoid falling in."

"Unless they know some physics we don't."

"True. So it's taken them this long to get the signal? Or at least, to break orbit?"

"They would have received it at once, Jeff – the crucial point is, the delay is evidence that their focus would be mere millimetres from the event horizon."

Shepard interjected: "To maximize time hibernation."

"Exactly so, Captain."

"Which makes them vulnerable?"

"Yes, in ways Lawson decided we can exploit. If we're right, it would have taken Reapers at the Nest a week – in our reference frame – merely to realize that the QEC comms in all Reaper ships across the galaxy had ceased operation. It's also conceivable that climbing out of the gravity and time well has delayed them."

"Also," Shepard remarked, "they may have taken damage from the Red Flash. Those in the shadow of the Event Horizon, however, would have survived."

"Gawd. How many are coming out?"

"The gravity waves are consistent with one capital Reaper mass under _severe_ mass-energy acceleration. But the latest flash from the galactic north probes has more peaks in the Fourier spectrum. There's others down there."

Shepard agreed with that. "The rule of three – a combat section or triad. Capital, destroyer, and slaughter ships."

* * *

 _Decimated mus_

Maria was welcomed back to the flotilla leader's CIC comm board with a traditional _Hurrah_ , Russian-style. Garrus watched as seemingly every crewmate shook her hand, then cast an eye on her captain, grinning fiercely. The Captain (D) – a staff position, the man's actual rank was commander – noted Garrus' attention and commented: "We'll see to it she leaves this behind her, General."

Garrus remained silent a moment, then: "You have until we reach the N-16 relay. I'm not happy, commander. Her appointment was by direction of the Primarch with the Admiral of the Fleet's co-operation. She should have been able to fend Robbens off."

"She's a tech specialist, General, not a combat trooper."

"Turians make no such distinction. I was required to put her in harm's way, so this is on _me_. If I'd known she had no combat training… and what happens next time?"

The commander looked uneasy. "I will see to it she is trained, General."

"Good. And I'll call in a few favors myself. You ever meet Brooks?"

* * *

 _Maintenance versus Development_

Tali was not by nature a maintenance engineer, so she had been having a depressing year. At 2130 she lay curled up in her bunk in her team's maintenance shed close to N-8, having just finished the latest firmware and hardware updates.

It was hard to sleep. Next day she had to move back to Arcturus and another round of admiralty disputes, things she could only attend as a QEC hologram in Rannoch, fifty thousand light years and decades away. And now to top it off some bosh'tet carelessly tripped a proximity alarm! She ran out to scream at the offender, but:

 _That's not the team shuttle. It's a **frigate**. A very familiar looking frigate._

The silly twerp flying it lowered the ramp just forty metres from her shed, and she ran to see what this vision meant, when an entirely different vision walked down the ramp in a skinsuit like Miranda's, but white, breather attached.

"Chambers! Keelah Se'lai!"

"Tali'Zorah vas Normandy. Admiral. Would you mind terribly a temporary demotion to engineer?"

"Just try and stop me!"

 _Rumors of wars_

Chambers didn't try and stop her, but she ran back to her shed locker anyway. With Shepard around, she would need her old guns. Chambers ribbed her a little:

"You were quick to jump aboard."

"Do you have any idea how soul-destroying track maintenance is?"

"No?"

"I _was_ able to resume interesting technical research after finding a suitable proxy – Raan – to vote on my behalf in Admiralty matters. But…"

"I'm guessing that didn't have quite the effect you'd hoped?"

"The first conduit relays had teething issues which took months to resolve. That ongoing development resembled a grinding maintenance effort, rather than research. Worse, it means I've hardly any 'life' as quarians understand it, at all."

"Well… as 'social' as quarians notoriously are, that has to be difficult."

"It's not forever, and eventually, the relay net will be able to transit a cruiser's mass."

"That's five years away. For now you're working on control protocol encryption, and precision at extreme range."

"How did you know that? Everything about the relays is a need-to-know secret!"

"I need to know a lot of things, these days."

* * *

- _End (of_ _Way of Life_ _)_ -

This world begins again at Arc 8: _"_ _King's Endgame_ _"_ \- by the same author (under s/11492572/1/). _Next chapter: #100, "Duffer's Fluff"_

* * *

Sunday, September 6, 2015


End file.
